Hamlet is Dying

[IceM]

Two students, one of literature, the
other of his reader, gaze at their sole
subjects, reader seeking to discover
himself, subject seeking to unearth the
new considerationg his actions lend.

[Suicide] "To be or not to be, that
is the question," yet it is not; it is
his hierarchical dispute, his maddening
love for Ophelia, his passage for meaning
in Shakespearean vice and ethereal sin.
Political interpretations make
the students satiesfied in vititated
knowledge. Hamlet is dying, yet
Shakespeare never penned it as such.

Devoted reader, you well know better,
but the masses? Do the perpetual
propagators of coloured meanings, carrying
auxiliary motives and dampened
palates, know such? The student is one,
the classrom is many. They are tomorrow.

The reader, searching for himself among
many forces and internal dispositions,
will someday find his purpose. Hamlet has
many, his ultimate calling erased by
colored seas. Hamlet knows Hamlet is dead.

[hillwalker]

This seems to have washed up onto the poetry forum by mistake - it hardly qualifies as a poem in any shape or form.

Your random line breaks merely serve to make it more difficult to understand. If it was written as a paragraph of prose it might be more comprehensible, but it's still a tough bone to chew.

H

[PrinceMyshkin]

In keeping with what Hillwalker says, and notwithstanding evidence of a mind that loves to engage in metaphysical debate, this was hard to decipher, beginning with the murky distinction between the student of literature and student of his "reader". What reader would that be? The word is often used to designate a primary school text but here, I suspect, you may intend it to refer to us who are reading this poem? If so, it's clever - but cleverness isn't enough.

[IceM]

The second reader listed in the first stanza is Hamlet, studying his reader.

This poem isn't meant to reflect anything other than misinterpretations of literature. Suicide in brackets is what the quote means, for "To be or not to be" is Hamlet's great issue about suicide; the next explanations serve to underscore how it's been taught.

Hillwalker I realized when I first wrote it that it wouldn't be common, ordinary poetry, nor is it exemplary, but I consider it poetry in that it speaks in a language more cryptic than common prose. At least that's how I define this poetry aspect of my piece.

My intention was to document how, using Hamlet as an example, literature is being mistaught. The third stanza documents the inevitability of a misreading's perpetuation, and the fourth documents how Hamlet's meaning is erased in the "colored seas" of impure deductions.

I also aimed to make this a difficult poem to read. It seems I have succeeded. Thank you very much for the reviews!

Regards,
IceM

[deryk]

This is pretty interesting, it seems like it is criticism reconstructed as poetry.
I'm not sure if I have encountered such a thing before, so kudos on that.
As for the free verse, although I won't say the form is non-existent, I will say that it seems to work against your subject-object. If you were to reiterate in a form that is more dependent on Shakespeare- or counter-intuitive to Shakespeare even- I think you'd have much more success at executing your claimed intentions. I hate being prescriptive almost as much as talking about intent, but just food for thought.