Like you say, poetry gives us the freedom to play through artistic creativity, and ponder what it means for something to work and for something to be right. But as a fellow educator, I'm always a little haunted by where the line is between what's working/right and what isn't working and what's wrong. For so long, like you intimate by bringing up the racist origins of the SAT, there has been a narrow, biased, and incomplete hegemony on right and wrong. But moving equally subjectively in the other direction only mires us in solipsism. At least I think.
One day, I was tutoring a student on how to annotate and write about Sylvia Plath's poem, "Spinster." And the student thought the poem was more about how courting in Plath's time was more like a game, similar to the card game Plath invokes in her characterization of the heroine's 'queenly wits.' Which . . . Felt wrong. As true as that was, to me "Spinster" is less about the game of love and more about the heroine's difficulty reconciling her suitor's imperfections and her retreat into solitude at the expense of any love at all. So I told him that. I told him his interpretation was wrong. And I hate that because again, what works? What is right?
In preparing to be English teachers (or at least in my preparation) they tell us that if a student can back up their interpretations with relevant quotes--if they prove their point--they deserve full credit, no matter how wrong that interpretation feels. And in Lit Theory, we're asked to be skeptical about a writer's biography and own intent in deciding the right and wrong ways to experience their work. I guess all this is to say that like with poetry, in academia we play with meaning. I just wish it gave us clearer answers.
Like you say, poetry gives us the freedom to play through artistic creativity, and ponder what it means for something to work and for something to be right. But as a fellow educator, I'm always a little haunted by where the line is between what's working/right and what isn't working and what's wrong. For so long, like you intimate by bringing up the racist origins of the SAT, there has been a narrow, biased, and incomplete hegemony on right and wrong. But moving equally subjectively in the other direction only mires us in solipsism. At least I think.
One day, I was tutoring a student on how to annotate and write about Sylvia Plath's poem, "Spinster." And the student thought the poem was more about how courting in Plath's time was more like a game, similar to the card game Plath invokes in her characterization of the heroine's 'queenly wits.' Which . . . Felt wrong. As true as that was, to me "Spinster" is less about the game of love and more about the heroine's difficulty reconciling her suitor's imperfections and her retreat into solitude at the expense of any love at all. So I told him that. I told him his interpretation was wrong. And I hate that because again, what works? What is right?
In preparing to be English teachers (or at least in my preparation) they tell us that if a student can back up their interpretations with relevant quotes--if they prove their point--they deserve full credit, no matter how wrong that interpretation feels. And in Lit Theory, we're asked to be skeptical about a writer's biography and own intent in deciding the right and wrong ways to experience their work. I guess all this is to say that like with poetry, in academia we play with meaning. I just wish it gave us clearer answers.