Alexander Hall
8 August 2018
Period 2
Summer Reading Assignment
1. According to the text, why shouldn’t an author explain or interpret his/her own poetry?
The argument against authors answering questions about the story after it is finished presented
by Perrine showcases points such as the fact that it takes away from a reader’s experience, thus
taking away from the overall quality of the work; confusing readers by throwing in different
meanings than what they had originally thought, as brought up by Yeats; and it could kill a
reader’s creativity towards the story. However, Perrine also brings up some contradicting
arguments that don’t quite make sense in the light of the essay itself. If a poem has one correct
interpretation, and ONLY one correct interpretation, why would it matter that a reader should be
possible to have an open creativity with the poem? Why would it matter if a poet says the
meaning outright? Is it for some sick challenge? It is very unclear.
2. According to Perrine, what are the two criteria for judging an interpretation of a poem?
The two criteria that Perrine believed to show which interpretation of a story within all the others
is the “most correct” are the amount of details covered by the interpreter’s theory (the more the
better) and, if one encounters two interpretations that covers the same amount of details, the
number of assumptions in the theory (the lower the better) becomes the deciding factor.
According to this, for lack of better words, bastardized rubric, there is only one correct
interpretation to every story, however unclear it may be. The one that is considered correct is the
one that meets the highest expectation of the criteria. While from a student standpoint others
would agree with this wholeheartedly, from a personal standpoint the criteria are disturbing in a
way that isn’t quite describable.
5. Explain in 2-3 sentences how the final line of Perrine’s essay relates to the main argument,
or main point, of his essay.
A rose is a rose is a rose, and is more than a rose. But a rose is not an ink blot. Nor is a
poem.
Perrine summarized the article with these sentences because at the heart of their opinion, poems
are not designed to be tests that showcases one’s way of thinking, but instead are meant to have
one meaning and no other. An ink blot, or a Rorschach test as the official name, is a
psychological test that was, by design, meant to showcase one’s opinions on what they see in a
monochromatic image whether it’s something in the negative space or positive space. Perrine
showcases that a poem is not to be left up to one’s opinion, but instead up to a factual
observation with a possibility of a correct answer instead of having no incorrect answers.