As I was reading through the packet of poems I felt that “Space” (1988) by Ted Berrigan really stood out to me. I see this poem as the perfect example of my inability and trouble with interpreting poems. The poem is very short, 12 lines long, and has a very interesting way of starting out. But I am noticing physical and structural things about it. My general issue with poetry is understanding the text. “Space” is in first person and the individual is “talking” to a female counterpart while observing her. He is basically “speaking” his thoughts about everything happening at that moment. This man then goes to interact with the woman. Then immediately he begins to talk about a family gone to West Virginia, the Chrysler Building making the Empire State Building stand tall (is this supposed to be a sexual innuendo?), and ends on a philosophical and thought provoking point about there being appointments for everyone but it being their responsibility and in their control to keep them. I see the different points made throughout the poem, but I am not making the connections and understanding the poem as a whole. This is important to me because I don’t know if there is a central idea in this entire poem or if there are supposed to be smaller fragments of the idea. Maybe there is no big idea and the poem is meant to be contain just these small idea and no bigger argument. But that would make no sense as everything needs to have a central thesis.
These poems were fun to read for the simple purpose of reading them and interpreting them in my own way. Once we involve the task of closely reading and analyzing the poem, the confusion arises quickly. I don’t feel confident that what I am understanding and getting from the poem is what everyone else is and is what I am supposed to be retrieving.
