Does a poem need a context?

Florian, hello. "...or where the content/subject is obvious and self explanatory..." I doubt if any of my attempts at poetry are any of the above. It is all a learning process after all.

This is topic I have struggled with since I first came on to ABC and I sort of agree with you Florian, but I always come back to the belief that a poem should be strong enough to stand on its on two feet. I have been more than guilty in the past of writing poetry that without a back story is quite plainly inaccessible and I am massively grateful that people try to "work it out". Yes, some poetry may get lost, but I think a lot of the time if it's written well enough, you don't need to know it's about how low someone felt after finding out the Gasmen has been knocking of their boyfriend etc. One of the first and best poems I have read on here was Beheld by Amlee. I have read it several times and still do not know what it's about, but I know it's a brilliant poem and I hope she won't mind me posting it: She blanks me all the time now – a new habit of ignoring me completely. Holding her frame ballerina taut she pretends she’s all languid nonchalance. Like chocolate trying to melt in ice water. I alone catch the twitch beneath the left eyelid and the way she jumps ten feet if anyone touches her. Pupils dilated against the headlamp of human scrutiny, moist beads of sudden sweat behind her ears. I will her to exhale. Sensing my proximity she’d quicken her pace: Darting, ducking, dodging, changing lanes against the traffic of thoughts and playing chicken with the near collision of our minds. Or I’d find her skulking in darkened doorways of deliberate forgetfulness. Recalcitrant. Impossible. Sometimes she’d just talk faster, fills her mouth with four syllable words to deflect our confrontation. I have to run to catch up. She would disappear for days on end. Wherever I walked I would look for her face in the crowd. I sent her endless postcards from the edge of time each saying the same “Wish you were here.” Each left unread in her burgeoning mailbox. As I was near to giving her up for lost I suddenly found her pacing my porch on a stormy afternoon. She pounded the door once, hard, with her smallish fists: Arrested agony and petrified rage stopped her from crying out even then. I pressed my face against the great divide of oak and unforgiveness, held my breath, and waited. But it is only in her sleep that she wakens to the landscape of her heart. Wandering the labyrinth of uneasy dreams she hunts for me. Once I heard her call my name and I hovered in hope of being gathered back into her sweetpea embrace. But her eyes are veiled for her tears and I remain unclaimed. When dawn comes she rises to don a fresh, bitter cloak against the new morn of insults. As she launches herself into yet another day of counterfeit animation, I gathered the three stray strands from her hairbrush: sixty-six thousand three hundred twenty one, twenty two and twenty three; wrapped them tenderly in jasmine scented tissue paper, so I could place them beneath my pillow tonight. I think sometimes the joy should be in the working out and even if we don't get there in the end the writing must have been good enough along the way to erm...stir the heart (oh dear). Anyway Florian, enough about this, I want to hear more about Clive(I'm a newbie and can't be bothered to read anyone else or edit my own stuff but expect professional feedback from only qualified writers)Pearson - yes let's talk some more about Clive.;-) Only joking clive...well half joking.

I also thought cat at first but made the same deduction as you - whatever it's about, would knowing make it any better? I don't know, it would provide a moment of clarity, but what's there is there - we'll have to agree to disagree about the language though - I not sure the language of poetry should ever be ordinary, even if it is at the expense of clarity - but that's just my opinion. ATB Fatboy

ScoZen, Fatboy and Forian, This is an important topic of discussion in my opinion. I think I am intelligent enough to say that I am not sure. On reading the first suggestion (about a contextualisation) I was positive about it as a valuable thing - now I am not too sure. I think that if a poem is good enough it will answer all its own questions. After all - the POETRY is quite simply the language that we chose, one word as opposed to another. If the poetic language is of a good quality then there will be what I call a 'mouth-feel' - how the poem feels when it is read (and it should be read aloud). So on balance I say let the poem stand alone if its legs are strong enough it will stay upright. I have been begged by people to explain my poetry and I simply won't do it. I also understand that an explanation is far more than the mooted suggestion but I think you guys understand what I am trying to get at. Scratch.

I think both viewpoints are valid because they both represent one of the many ingredients of a poem. Poetry is the music of words and therefore a good poem must be appreciated on that level as well as the cerebral. Shakespeare's internal rhyme schemes give his words so much more power. All the other poetic devices such as alliteration, assonance etc. add to the strength. Poetry is also the 'colour of saying' - how one writer's perspective can show the reader a new viewpoint, or identify a familiar but perhaps unrecognized one. And then there is the magical imagery that allows the mind to fashion amazing pictures of its own. But beyond that is the mind behind the poem. I can remember on first reading Blake how I was immediately enthralled by the words, but after studying his life story the poetry revealed other as yet undiscovered levels.Dylan Thomas' "Do not go gentle" increased in poignancy when I learned he had written it about his dying father. So I am quite comfortable with appreciating a poem without any back-story, and I do agree with others here that a good poem must stand alone, but I also find I gain much from knowing more about how the poem came to be written and the person behind the poem.

Goodness me, several people on a forum post who pretty much agree with each other. Where's all the vitriol? I think we poets bring a level of decency that the prosemonkeys are unable to run with, they are all savages at heart and find it impossible to convey the maximum meaning in the minimum words and ramble on and on, page after page. I have to admit juniperus my own reading of Dylan Thomas was enhanced greatly with background - without it I found most of the poetry hard going, Pound's Cantos are a nonsense without it (and with it), Elliot's four quartets ...I seem to have come full circle - almost, but whether we need to do it on here or not i'm still unsure. Should scratch have included footnotes for some of the more obscure references in magpie that some people didn't get and would doing so have enhanced the enjoyment? I don't know. It wouldn't have done any harm I suppose, but there's a google search tab at the top of the page and finding out new stuff for yourself is good for the soul.

Hahaha 'prosemonkey'. I may steal this as my user name.

THE apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough. Ezra Pound :)

Florian, I now realise that I am spending far too much time doing this - I MUST stop it. Just like I stopped drinking wifebeater and Arthur Bells last week and I'm going to stop again tomorrow. Scratch.