From: Cookiesss at aol.com <Cookiesss>
Date: Tue, 29 Apr 2003 10:38:43 EDT

Suicide? Winter? Sleep?

Here's a quote from poet Jorie Graham (which I borrowed from Kris George's great website:

"When you give a child poems (remembering, once the silence closes back over the end of the poem, not to ask "what does this mean?" but rather, "what did you feel?" or "what did you see?"), you are opening up different parts of his or her reading apparatus than fiction or drama or journalism open up??? What would you do if, after you'd just heard "and miles to go before I sleep, / and miles to go before I sleep"--and the silence that sweeps back over that--your teacher asked: what does the poet mean by those lines? And you want to say--your heart wants to say--he means: he has miles to go before he sleeps. He means what he says. But your teacher explains that, no, it's a poem "about" the desire to commit suicide. Now, it might well be a poem that leads, eventually, in that direction, but it's not primarily a cryptograph. Nor is it primarily a Rorschach stain, or philosophy in a can, whose opener is safely tucked in the pocket of the teacher. It's primarily what it says it is. Under such conditions, though, who wouldn't think, well, this stuff is in code, and it's a code I'll never crack."

xx, Sonya Sones
Received on Tue 29 Apr 2003 09:38:43 AM CDT