Meaning?

Shaun Williams

CRTW Capstone

A Guide to Poetics Journal

Research Writing Piece

 

“The affirmations in the text may be made in such ways that they will need to be challenged. A reader who approaches such writing to put pieces together and figure out what the author means is likely to feel cheated, because the author’s intention is not to convey a whole statement that absorbs potential dialogue but rather to convey a framework of significations of urgency and coherence and interest in itself, for reading.

Identities, doubts, passions, recollections, dazed impressions, specific needs, criticism, awe, distraction, sensuality, and an urge towards the realization of understanding in a form still operate, at will.”

 

When I read translations, I poke around the words.

Not at them, guessing at a reality not hinted at

But encoded by some prisoner from another world—

Nobody’s perfect; but I relish the quest for the peculiar nature

Of some original writer, unknown to us

but through his function.

 ***Before I officially started this program, I was a total prescription writer…boring, bland, and obvious. 1+1=2…that was my writing style. That’s why the above passage from Poetics Journal speaks to me so much. It is basically saying that it is not only freeing to step outside the box and abolish old conventions, but totally necessary. The reader has to make up his or her own mind, whether the text is together or scrambled up into some abstract interpretation. In other words, interpretation is a must…so why not make the reader really try to find meaning? I wrote a poem that a reader would really have to dissect and put into pieces to get some kind of meaning from it. When I used to write poems, I would write them so that they totally made sense in a conversational way and that each line flowed clearly into the next. This piece is the opposite of that.

 

I write what I write so that you might know the difference

Between a pond and a river.

One flows through mediocrity…

Mountain sights you let me in on.

When I say “sea” you tell me “me!” How could you ever

Untangle an algorithm???

Breathless, flightless, fearless…that’s what my memory is.

Can’t stop the rushing river when it’s about to flood

With sugar and spice.

I write this so you will re-write it…so that you may wrap it around your dexterous finger.

This is a want within a want within a want within a hope.

Keep saying this until it is true.