Question:
What do you think of this?
What is real and what is not
Heart so clear yet mind must rot
Painful soulclouds soon will rise
Daggers prick ones frozen eyes
What was once now has gone
Body here but insides torn
Prudent nature has been stirred
Voices cry but never heard
Devils work is not yet done
War is on but still not won.
I wrote it a couple of years back...but I am interested in what people think and how they might interpret it?
Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:
I interpret poetry (like most people do) by trying to notice things about the poem and then trying to put those things into a larger context. So that's what you'll see me doing in the next paragraphs: noticing things and then (hopefully) putting them in context.
I concur with "Luv Thy Neighbor" that it has kind of a bouncy quality. It's the trochaic meter that gives it that nursery-rhyme rhythm. Not that it's a bad thing, necessarily -- exploiting those latent psychological connections that the meter makes to childhood memories in the reader is potentially fertile ground indeed.
The only line that doesn't fit the meter is "What was once now has gone." It breaks the flow of the poem, creates a kind of fissure in the middle of it. Does it mark some kind of transition in the poem, some sort of conceptual as well as metrical break?
The poem is very, very abstract. You start with a question of ontology ("What is real and what is not"). That's not just a poem, it's an entire field of philosophical inquiry. You seem to be making a distinction between the heart, the mind, and the soul. That's metaphysics. You mention eyes, the organs of perception. The body. Nature (instinct?). Voices. The Devil. And finally war, which I take to be the central metaphor here -- some kind of conflict that blinds you, deafens you, rots your mind, tears your insides.
Now, because this is a poem on Yahoo! Answers, my default interpretation would be that you broke up with your boyfriend. And. . . well, it's a stretch, but I could see it. Lots of internal conflict about something ill-defined. But there's no mention of love or anything like it. My second guess would be that it's a cautionary tale about drugs (another Yahoo! Answers favorite), and that actually fits quite well. But the thing is that I don't want it to be about drugs, because if it were it would just be so banal. The third default Answers option is that it's the default goth poem. "No one understands me, I'm so sad and screwed up, rotting/death/satan, death decay dagger." The use of the word "soulclouds" supports this thesis. I could see someone wearing giant black boots with too many buckles using the word "soulclouds." But ultimately I don't like this analysis either; it's reductive.
The inevitability in the last two lines sounds like the progression of some kind of disease. What is the devil's work? Deception, corruption, the erosion of the right and good. All of that could be in play -- the first line makes it clear that the narrator is uncertain about reality, and the second makes it clear that the mind is eroding.
I guess that after all of that I don't have a strong thesis. It's just too abstract and indeterminate a poem. I have, however, formed various weak theses: it has similarities to nursery-rhymes; it's explicitly metaphysical; it's about incapacity to hear and see and think, possibly the result of devilish machinations. And of course it implies certain things about the nature of poetry as a medium, etc. The standard stuff.
At least it's interesting.