Thank you for sending me your poems.
I've been reading and thinking about them.
Is my inference correct,
that it was the melody of the language,
the rhyme and the rhythm,
rather than a preconceived meaning
which dictated the words?
That's no criticism at all, only an hypothesis.
Usually, I believe, it's the other way around:
an intended meaning becomes incarnate in rhyme and rhythm.

Would you consider,
as you compose the sonnet in verse,
accompanying it as its mirror image
with an account in prose which elaborates
and expands the meaning of the poem's lines?


A robin may regret what made it blush, 
Now drenched by raindrops fallen from the sky,
My mutterings, once clouds, make green more lush, 
The bird who's song's so sweet forgets to fly.

Content to sing still shadowed by the reeds,
I swell with pride as crickets hum my tune, 
They buzz I laugh I live for insect needs, 
Away they'll jump can't help but ask how soon.

Imagine me a storm cloud mocked by grass
I can't.  My echo's chant, you'll grant, is slow.
Perhaps this robin waits for rain to pass, 
Begrudging thunder's trail it wouldn't show.

You like my reddish hue, but you are blind.
I look for worms. It's worms, at best, I'll find.

And another:

Your eyes are bright, my dear.  How well you see!
I told the little lion as it slept.
It knows the shade, but not shade's canopy, 
Won't think of willow, only why it wept.

How beautiful for me if I dare wake him,
The cleansing sun would sparkle on his coat,
Why taunt myself with dreams I know mistaken?
Once lion's gone what place have I to gloat?

I wish I saw the borders of the leaves.  
But every time I look they ride the wind, 
Pure rain, alas, you too are what deceives.
The sleeping lion hopes that he has sinned.

I'd forfeit even sight of covered eyes, 
To know I'd fail regardless of my tries.  

A day or two ago, a friend e-mailed me a poem by Yeats,
asking me what I thought it meant. You might be interested.

I replied:

Thank you for your letter.
First things first.
I'm charmed by the Yeats poem.

Gratitude to the Unknown Instructors
 
What they undertook to do
They brought to pass;
All things hang like a drop of dew
Upon a blade of grass.
 
It's a real poem. It's meaning is unique to each reader.
My interpretation reflects my obsession with epistemology.
The poem is about being taught by Unknown Instructors.
The circumstance that they are unknown, means they're not tenured.
Being unknown they must be unknowable, - because the first
and the most important thing the Professor - and don't take
this personally, - wants you to know is his or her name.
The only conclusion: that I'm taught by nature, by self, - or
if you care for Spinozistic dimensions, by "Substance", by "God."
The "things" that hang like a drop of dew upon a blade of grass,
are the objects known, or their images, the two are
interchangeable, representations, "Vorstellungen" of reality,
which is all that the "Unknown Instructors" have imparted to me.
Like that drop of dew, my knowledge is fragile and evanescent.
It has condensed from only God knows where, and will in no time,
drip or evaporate whence it came.

=================

What do you think?