Poetry: Expressively Equivocal

Poetry is one of the equivocal forms of writing, yet also one of the most expressive. When reading poetry, it is often hard to draw a poet’s meaning from his words. Each line can be interpreted in so many ways. It takes many read-throughs to fully comprehend the genius of a poem’s language and imagery, and the impeccable details within. But once those are grasped, poems show a depth of expression which other genres are unable to portray.

The title of the poem Lens immediately caught my eye; it led me to the conclusion that the author, Reginald Shepherd, was describing the lens of a camera. The first time reading it through, it did not make any sense to me.  What does the phrase “where the blue meets blue, where sky meets the sky” have to do with photography?

Once I examined the language of the poem more thoroughly, the “lens” being described seemed to be not that of a camera, but the lens of a human’s eye. With this definition of the word, the poem took on a new meaning for me. It told the all too familiar story of love and heartbreak. The blue meeting blue suddenly appeared in my mind as two blue-eyed people, looking into each other’s eyes, each hiding things: conflicted feelings and tears.

Many of the other poems in the packet were equally as hard to read and the meanings of them remain elusive. The part of me that is hanging on to grammar rules is irritated by the lack of punctuation and capitalization, the run-on sentences and odd word usage. By far the most difficult part of reading poetry is the creative words choice. It is hard to get my mind past the common meaning of a word and embrace the more unusual definition. One such example was the word “summer” in Lens. I could not make sense of the line “where silence becomes summer, there where summer wouldn’t wait” until I discovered “summer” can also be defined as a period of maturing powers. Despite poetry’s ambiguity, it is still a beautiful style of communication.