Interpretation of Poetry?

[sand]

People say that poetry is beyond interpretation. We read poems by feelings. So it's silly to ask what aimage symbolizes. Actually a professor in my university iritated a poet by keeping asking such questions in a series of poetry reading by the poet.

Well, what can I say? I agree.

But what if we express our feelings by an essay rather than a poet? So let's play a game. I put two short poems here, and let's express what the poets' want to express by prose to see what the differences between prose and verse are.

Let's have the fun:

River
by Ted Hughes
Fallen from heaven, lies across
The lap of his mother, broken by world.

But water will go on
Issuing from heaven

In dumbness uttering spirit brightness
Through its broken mouths

Scattered in a million pieces and burried
Its dry tombs will split, at a sign in the sky,

At a rendering of veils.
It will rise, in a time after times,

After swallowing death and the pit
It will return stainless

For the deliverry of this world.
So the river is a god

Knee-deep among reeds, watching men,
Or hung by the heels down the door of a dam

It is a god, and inviolable.
Immortal. And will wash itself of all deaths.


who remembers his house
by Robert Berold
who remembers his house
its moss and stone

who rode on bare trucks
who slept on cement

chopped food on cement floors
who ate his fellow animals

pools of stars
lights of desire

who connected cables
with the other world

[IrishCanadian]

Water comes from heaven. It is shifted by the ground. It keeps comming in this fassion and thereby seems to talk about how bright spirits are even though it can't talk. It will split up and eventually make its way underground where the water will seem to melt away. These place, or caves if you will, will split because of something in the sky that renders veils. After a long time what is left of the river will rise or evaporate. After it does this it will come back spotless as if nothing happened in the first place and then deliver the world. In this way the river greatly resembles a god. The god that the river is can be seen wading in reeds or hainging by its heels over a dam. Dispite this unfortunate position it is in fact imortal and, in its godlyness, it will not be guilty of a single human death.

That was an interesting excperience. I do not agree with your professor. We do not always interpret poems with feelings, poems are not always written with feelings either (though the best ones are). But this was a fun exercise. I'll leave Who Remembers this House for the next person.
And welcome to the forum sand! This is a fun idea.