4 ms·
I find the lines: ---- Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; ---- to be perfec
by 8bitsrule 8y ago
I find the lines:
----
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
----
to be perfectly clear ... and suited to the 'common misreading'...
A poem is more or less ink spots on a piece of paper; it means what the reader finds in its deliberate ambiguity ... not what some 'expert interpreter' insists it means.
- chmod775 8y agoTo be fair, while ambiguity can be intended by the author, a poem usually has a finite number of meanings intentionally written into it. If those experts find meaning in a poem the author did not write into it, they failed at their job. If however a poem is found to mean something the author did not intend to say, the author failed.
- jacobush 8y agoLanguage is not static in time and space.
- chmod775 8y agoIt is your job as the reader/expert to interpret a poem based on the language as it was spoken and understood in the time period the poem was written.
- nsomaru 8y agoAn English teacher in high school, emphasising that poetry was subject to interpretation, once recounted to us that John Donne was once attacked in a newspaper over his exposition of the meaning of a poem that he himself had written!
- sooheon 8y agoThey suit the common misreading if the very next four lines don't exist. Which is why it's a misreading--it's like ignoring every word after "however," in a sentence. Though as for that the passing there / Had worn them really about the same, / And both that morning equally lay / In leaves no step had trodden black.