-=Dark_Angel=-, P.I.11 Oct 2004

I don't think it's always a "great thing" that readers interpret your work in different ways. In most cases, that happens because you have inadequately conveyed what you were trying to convey. John Keats said that poetry "...should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost as a remembrance". Most of the poemes I like touch a nerve, and by skillful use of language they really capture the essence of what they're trying to say. They communicate it so well, that it seems like your own remembrance, rather than something someone else thinks. One example is Wilfred Owen's "Dulce et decorum est". Here is a dumpling:

"GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning."

I was far too old to serve in the trenches of WWI, but the poeme made me feel as if I was ACTUALLY there, and it had been one of MY comrades who had broken wind. Food for thought? Thanks for listening.