Yesterday I found myself thinking about weight; the weight of what we specifically bring (and cannot help but bring) to our reading of texts. Our heads are full of language, and what we know and understand that language to mean, all the associations that we have built up over the years pertaining to specific words and phrases. Say the word house for example and you will be able to conjure up an image of a house – but that image will be different for everyone. It may be an icon or a childish rendition of a house, or it may be a specific house – the house you live in, your childhood home, the house of a friend or lover, or a house that you admire. For me it is the house across the street from mine – an image I see everyday from my living room window, so it is firmly etched on my mind, but I live on a terraced street in a city, so that house comes attached to another house - it is hard to think of one without seeing the other. We each bring our own memories and associations (our own baggage) to that one simple word – house.
I found myself wondering what would it be
like to not bring this burden (if it is a burden) of knowledge to the reading
of a poem or text? Would it make the words seem fresher, newer? Would we glean
a deeper or greater meaning from the text? Does our store of language, meaning,
images and understanding weigh the writing down and skew the intended meaning?
Or does what we bring to the table add something positive to the writing, taking
the meaning beyond the page?
Yesterday morning I was reading a poem by
Rosemarie Waldrop. The second line of the poem contained the phrase “with
pieces of torn underwear.” Even though the full line was “A clothesline with
pieces of torn underwear, reflected in a puddle.” My mind zoomed in on the
phrase “pieces of torn underwear” and I proceeded to apply to it all the
connotations I have built up around such an image: crime novels I have read, TV
series and films I have watched and news stories that I have heard over the
years. My mind immediately began wondering (picturing even) how the underwear
might have been torn and it concluded it could have been rape and possibly also
murder. Of course there could be a hundred other reasons for torn underwear.
And you might also wonder why I wasn’t also wondering why they were pegged onto
the line and not on the floor or in the bin – in fact I did pay attention to
this, but not before my mind had done the whole torn underwear dance I just
described. So you see I brought the weight of all the things I have heard,
read, seen and understood to this one simple (if loaded) phrase. My mind would
not allow me to simply read it for what it was – pieces of torn underwear on a
line, reflected in a puddle. Is this meandering of the mind a burden or a
blessing? I couldn’t quite decide. But as my artist friend pointed out, it is
knowledge and experience that enables us to understand written language (or
language at all) in the first place – and without it the text would be
meaningless to us. So maybe it is a
blessing after all – and this post is meaningless…
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3 comments:
I worry about these issues too. "house" could be so many things. In real life the context helps, but for the "torn underwear" the only context is the poem. There are styles of poetry that encourage the poet's use of the context to control the connotations (strengthening some, weakening others). More fragmentary, white-spacey styles are happy for each phrase to maintain a web of meanings that overlap other webs. Those webs are shaped by the reader. If they read that a "bird" is in a garden, some people choose an option early (e.g. "blackbird"), backtracking if necessary (the bird may turn out to be an ostrich). Some people use parallel processing, especially if they're reading poetry. Sometimes the bird is only a symbol anyway, so any generic "bird" will do. I think some poets encourage readers to bring their "own baggage" while others (using disruption etc) suppress it.
There's more about this on Ingarden and the Sense of Resolution
Thanks for the link to that Tim. I have skimmed it but will give it a more in depth read when I get time. I quite like the reader to bring some baggage to reading a poem - but wonder if too much can impede - for example - if your reader always assumes a blackbird before giving the poem a chance to reveal what the bird is they might miss some subtle clues as to the type of bird. I have noticed this in some of my classes - some people always assume a romantic relationship if there are two people in a poem - whereas others always assume a parent and child. I find it fascinating.
I realise looking at this post now that the underwear itself might not actually have been torn but that it might have been the fragmentary nature of reflection making it appear torn. I love this about poetry that you can glean so many meanings from it on reading and re-reading.
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