Something that profoundly bothers me, as a student/a teacher/a person, is this horribly misguided idea that there's ONE set interpretation.
"Oh sorry -- your emotional response to something artistic is wrong. You didn't fit your answer into one of the multiple choice options. Your approach isn't in vogue with the critical framework we're using right now. Your thesis doesn't quite align with my research, and I'm a Academic, so obviously I am more correct, kiddo, don't even try."
Creations and interpretations are graded for one reason and one reason alone: we wrongly assume they should be. We take subjectivity and violently smear attempts at objectivity all the fuck over it. We force students into these sad, frustrated boxes and tell them there is one meaning to this poem, and if you get it wrong, you get a zero.
You get a zero.
Okay hold the fuck up for a second.
In what universe ---- in what UNIVERSE ------ would a poet -- someone who is writing in a necessarily figurative style -- assume that there was ONE INTERPRETATION of their piece?!
It INFURIATES me.
It is the absolute fucking opposite of art's intention.
Every time a literature teacher tells a student there is one correct meaning, they are murdering -- yes, murdering: repeatedly, ignorantly -- the potential inherent in art.
Probably the best teacher I've ever had was at McGill. In a notably conservative university, in a very unchallenging faculty, this man refused to let his students sit by passively. He refused to let us, future or current teachers, continue to believe that we should tell our students what poems mean. Among oh so much else, he gave us concrete strategies, backed up by excellent research, for teaching poetry --- and absolutely none of it had the teacher at the front spouting bullshit about what they learned X years ago in their degree and haven't thought about since.
As a student, as a teacher, as a person: I was overwhelmed.
I'd never believed what I'd always been told: I never believed there was one side to an interpretation. Yes: essays need justification. Yes: some interpretations are way the hell off in left field. But no: there is not one way to explain an artpiece. Not when we bring so damn much of ourselves to the encounter.
Who, once they are out of school, writes essays about books? Or poems? Or songs?
But we sure as hell read them; listen to them. Feel them.
Why don't we talk about that?
I briefly used this song as an example, today, of how the author's intent is ultimately irrelevant.
"Okay so we all know that Taylor wrote this song about Harry Styles ---"
"Wait what miss? Oh my god that makes so much sense oh my god"
"...okay so most of us know that Taylor wrote this song about Harry Styles. But -- when we listen to the song, do we think exclusively of Taylor and Harry?"
Bunch of shaking heads.
We think of ourselves.
We relate to songs because they matter to us. Lyrically, sometimes; musically, others. There is context. There is connection. There is personal interpretation.
For all my frustration with Taylor Swift as an icon, I love 1989 -- and Style, when I hear it, splits in multiple directions.
I am walking to work, listening to this album for the first time; trying to distract myself from dark thoughts; somehow this pulls me out.
I am in a cab with one of my best friends and two of hers; midnight in Toronto; on our way; pretending we don't know the words until we realize we all know the words and scream them out onto the street.
I am frantically reading Fables, voraciously breathing it in.
I am exploding, with all of me, into roughly-cut shards.
All of that feeds into my interpretation.
This song is not about Taylor and Harry.
Every now and then, when I have a class I think can handle it, I teach poetry the way that professor taught us.
Today, I tried, and it ended powerfully ----- but it was hard.
They eyed me in disbelief; they thought I was lying. One student admitted he'd received 20% on a poetry exam the previous year because the teacher had wanted a specific analysis. That same student cut off another in the middle of her interpretation: "Where did you see any mention of sexuality?"
I intervened: There wasn't any specific mention of it. Doesn't mean it wasn't there.
He replied -- not confrontationally and blushing when he realized what he'd said -- "I was taught better."
I answered, more coolly than you'd imagine, "You were taught differently."
I've been replaying that class in my head all day. Wondering if it's worth it, to pull teeth, to encourage this kind of thought, especially given their next teacher may tell them the opposite.
But I won't be a hypocrite. And I won't compromise on this.
There is never one interpretation.
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