Perrine's "The Nature of Proof in the Interpretation of Poetry"

Overall, I agree with Perrine's approach to poetry. However, I do not agree on one aspect of his interpretations. He bases the "correct" interpretation off of which one can account for all the details. When reading the Emily Dickinson poem, Perrine proves that his interpretation is correct, but no one else shared this same opinion. Everyone else interpreted this poem to be about a garden or a meadow, but Perrine proves them wrong. This is the point I disagree with. If everyone reads the poem and interprets it the same way, then how can they all be wrong? If every reader interprets it wrong, then clearly the author does not specifically state the poem's meaning. Therefore, the author writes it expecting for everyone to interpret a different way, so how can there be a right and wrong way? If the author wanted everyone to read it and to interpret it "correctly," then they would have written it that way. The author's ambiguity allows the reader to create their own interpretation.

Reading this article has changed the way I think about interpreting poems. Instead of assuming the first thing that comes to mind is correct, it made me look closer at the poems. It made me re-read them in order to pay attention to small details that may have been overlooked. The first time I read the poem "The Night-March," I thought it was about an army. I never would have guessed that it was actually about stars. I thought the poem was describing the soldiers moving quietly through the dark. I assumed that was the "correct" interpretation, so I did not pay attention to the words like "beaming," "bright," "gleam," "twinkling," and "shining" which all describe stars. Reading this article has helped me to re-read and pay closer attention to details in poems. It has also helped me to consider different interpretations other than the first one I think of.