I’ve reviewd a lot of poems and I have tended to ding the poet for writing lines that don’t make sense. Poetry has to make at least some sense, doesn’t it? The thing is, some poetry refers to topics that only the poet understands. Pick any poem out of any book and you’ll probably discover that you do not understand the poem completely.
Tough!
Read it again.
Do you understand it yet?
Read it again!
This is a tough lesson to grasp. In prose, understanding is paramount. In poetry vision, sound, and feel are more important. We don’t need a clear understanding to appreciate a poem. It’s a hard lesson that I hope I’ve learned. Now when I don’t understand the words, I re-read and re-read again until I at least come closer. I don’t get upset if I never understand it. The following paragraph is from a recent book I read.
* First of all, don’t be deterred if you do not understand a poem right away — or even after repeated readings. Rejecting something we claim not to understand is a cop-out. It’s the easy way off the proverbial hook. Try, instead, to experience what’s in the poem, even if that experience eludes your understanding. Let the poet startle and perplex you. Learn to go with it, accept it on its own terms, without qualifying at the first difficulty. The key to reading poems is openness. You need to be receptive, to take things as they come, to be alert enough to notice things but relaxed enough to let them drift together as they will. T.S. Eliot though a poem could be appreciated and enjoyed before it was understood. One of the pleasures of reading poetry is mulling over a poem and its reverberations, perhaps for a lifetime. – John Drury, “Creating Poetry” Writer’s Digest Books, 1991
My poem below has befuddled reviewers that know the title. I thought it would be a simple matter to iterpret it. Every word makes perfect sense to me. If you can figure out the subject, consider yourself an expert with words and ideas.
They live in fear of greener grass,
Café Moi 
What I say & what you hear are often two different things.
Writing is called a medium because that is what it is 8~
faith?
Good guess but the preacher already has faith.
I’ve read it a few more times now … and I was going to say ‘Life’, but that doesn’t really fit either so … when will I know? 😀
You may never know, but life is fairly accurate. The first sentence of the second stanza is probably the best description.
I am planning a four or five part blog about the topic, with illustrations. It may be awhile though. This is a major theme of <>.
Here’s my take: Everyone lives within their own reality. They only see the surface of another’s world. And all this is OK so long as you realize that, accept that and allow this understanding to temper your judgments.
I wish it were so simple. There are different manifestations of common ground. Marriage partners have much land to work with. Jews living in Nazi Germany had no room for compromise. American politics, world religions, racial communities, sexual preferences, and countless other relationships all carry their own brand of compromise. Some are easy to navifgate; others lead to war.
Your poem reminds me of the tumbling in turmoil of the human trampoline which Paul Simon made famous. Although, beneath the skin, we are essentially the same, made of the same elements, the war of compromise begins when we attempt to enter into relationship with one another.
Too often we are faced with “do what I say, not what I do,” or “be more like me so I can be comfortable when I am with you.” People are individuals and too often we fail to relate to that reality. We choose to seek similarities rather than try to embrace and comprehend differences. Forgetting that by embracing the differences, we bring ourselves into the possibility of similarities.
I like your poem. This may not be what you essentially intended, but it is what I found here.
Thanks for visiting my blog,
Elizabeth
http://intuitivepaths.wordpress.com/
Thank you for that Simon reference.
Ultimately, practically, regardless of how we define or describe it, for the writer such confluences of forces are the points of tension. We focus on the middle ground, the area where you and I overlap, the points of friction as well as harmony.