Experience, Interpretation and Evaluation of Poetry

The Experience of Poetry

Experiencing a poetry concerned primarily with subjective responses, which to say a personal reaction of the reader. This reaction is reflected on how the poem may be related to reader’s life. Each reader reaction to the same poem are probably vary based on the standpoint of their experiences.

By reading a poem, reader will call upon a memory much like the one that was written in the poem. But even if their experience does not exactly the same as the writer or if their feeling differs from his/her, reader’s personal responses still will be hitting a close mark in the sense of meaning and value of the poem itself.

The Interpretation of Poetry

Interpreting a poem basically mean to explain it to ourselves in order to understand it by making sense of the poem and consider its meaning. Unlike experiencing a poetry, interpretation needs lesser concern on how it affects the reader and more focus on what it means or suggests. So in other word, it relies on intellectual comprehension and rational understanding.

The act of interpretation divided into four parts:

1. Observation of the details in description and action, of language and form.

2. Connection among the details and begin to establish a sense of the poem’s coherence.

3. Inferences or interpretive guesses about their significance based on the connection that was found.

4. Conclusion about the poem’s meaning based on the three actions above.

The acts of interpretation are not necessarily happening in that order, most of the time, all four aspects of interpretation occur simultaneously.

Reading a poetry, in order to experience and interpret it well, need to be read slowly enough to observe the details of language, form, and sound. By reading it slowly and deliberately, the connections will easily be formed among the poem’s details. Interpretation did not end by only reading the poem, it continues as we reflect it afterwards. One final point about interpreting a poetry, and literature in general, is that interpretation never really ends.

The Evaluation of Poetry

On evaluating a poem, the first thing to do