Item of Interest || Interpretation vs. Sentiment

From a recent blog by Josh Corey, who tackles the subject of poetry's intentions through a recent publication by David Orr: Beautiful and Pointless: A Guide to Modern Poetry —and through other various critcal material.

The problem [...] is that we are never completely outside interpretation, just as we are never completely outside politics: the claim that poems need not be interpreted simply sets up the existing interpretive framework as the unmarked case, a "good" universal approach next to which all other approaches are particular, "academic," and "bad."


Corey provides a link to an important essay by Susan Sontag, "Against Interpretation," published in 1964, which is still relevant today.