The Scale of Meaning
A look at some of the issues that confront poetry readers when they search for meaning Meaning They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but what about a poem's meaning? One school of thought assumes that poets have a clear vision in their heads which they should translate as clearly as possible into words so that the reader can share this vision. This is the "Signal Processing" idea of communication, where writers aim to give the reader no freedom and ideally the medium should be transparent. Contrast the "Signal Processing" idea with what happens when composing music. I suspect that Mahler didn't have feelings which he translated into sound so that listeners could translate them back - he thought directly in music. I'm sure many poets think directly in words too. Further along the scale are Rorschach ink-blots. What people see in these shapes might well have nothing to do with what (if anything) was in the mind of the creator. So where in ...