The Importance of Other's Perspective and Commentary on Poetry

    This past week doing work for this class- whether it was the class discussions of AP prompts, working with my group to write an analysis, or listening to the poetry panel presentations- has made me realize how drastically my perception of a certain piece of work can change when I listen to all of my peer's thoughts on it. Poetry is artistic and at times even interpretive; meant to interact with the audience in a way that evokes certain emotions and rhythms as it is read. That is true while there is also an intention coming from the author that is important to truly understand the message of a poem. I think more so than in traditional prose style writing, my personal bias and associations influence the way I interpret a poem. The only way I could have learned this was by discussing and hashing out the details of certain lines with people who had a different perspective. With some of the poems that other groups have presented, there might even be historical research necessary to fully understand the scope of what a poem is saying- its allusions, language, and context. 

    After having a few of these experiences my knee jerk reaction is still to apply my own biases (for example, I considered the poem about the landlady to be a sort of commentary on landlord-tenet relationships as a whole) but now I feel more self-aware about it where I can acknowledge that the author may or may not be on the same wavelength as me, but I need to explore the possibility that they are not as well in a good analysis. In fact, the more angles at which you look at certain lines or stanzas, the more clear the general purpose of the poem could become. 

   Kind of related to perspectives and this is probably a bit much for an AP analysis, but I feel like it would be interesting to study the author's subconscious assumptions or general thoughts as implied by their intentions and strategies rather than just the authors intended meaning at the surface of their thoughts as well as the effects of poetic devices on different audience's subconscious assumptions and feelings (those that are not obviously intended by the poem to evoke).