I wrote this poem after hearing the poet Larry Schug speak to my English 133 class the other day. We were talking about one way to interpret his poem and he said "That's not what I meant it to mean, but that's cool!" The guy who brought it up said "Oh," in this really disappointed voice because what he'd gotten out of the poem had been really cool, something about capitalizing letters, and Larry said, by way of an explanation, "That's not wrong. Once I publish a poem, once you read it, it doesn't belong to me anymore. It's your poem- you can do whatever you want with it." Anyway, I thought what he had to say had a lot to do with Barthes and the death of the author and I wanted to do something with that.
So I wrote this. Have fun with it.
This poem does not belong to me any more.
a poem by mg written january 23rd
This poem does not belong to me any more.
This poem stopped belonging to me
when it stepped out of my pen
eyes flashing
fists up
teeth barred
ready to take on the world.
This poem stopped fighting my cause
when it met you-
it gave up,
went home,
switched sides!
You powerful person, you,
you reader!
You made it do that!
This poem does not belong to me any more-
This poem belongs to you.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
very cool
ReplyDeleteWhat a great application of Barthes's theory! Hearing a poet put someone else's meaning on the the same level as his intended meaning really brings the point home. And I love how you responded creatively to Barthes. Does this mean you want the author completely out of the picture when seeking meaning?
ReplyDeleteThat's not personally what I believe; I think the author is a very key part of finding another understanding a text as well as my own. It's kind of like modern art- You can get something completely different from what the artist says is a picture of his grief after the death of a parent. Does that make the message you get any less important? To me, art of any kind is all about the emotional response you can get from it, so to know about the author's intent gives it another dimension to explore.
ReplyDelete