New criticism of poetry---HELP!

This is a school-related question but not one where I am asking you to do my homework for me!

Actually, I am hoping that someone can explain something to me that for some reason, my brain cannot seem to comprehend.

In one of my classes (on poetry), my professor briefly discussed New Criticism. He did not expound on it in class much but indicated that it was important and that we may have a criticism on our mid-term involving us having to do our own review in the style of new criticism. I have read and read about this and I still cannot get a grasp of exactly what this entails. I am usually not this obtuse when it comes to literary terms but this concept just elludes me.

He did an example in class but all the info I am getting from him indicates that new criticism involves some type of uncovering riddles in poems. I know this is not what new criticism is all about. However, I have tried taking various poems and breaking them down, new criticism style and I cannot seem to do it.

Does anyone understand what I am talking about? Can anyone give me the idiot’s version of what new criticism is? Apparently, my recent lobotomy removed the literary analysis section of my brain!

Why don’t you read the excellent introduction by J. Evans Pritzger entitled “Understanding Poetry”? You plot the poem’s importance on the Y axis and how well it has achieved that objective on the X axis.

Or something like that.

Snooooopy, mysteriously, that page seems to be ripped out of my textbook! :stuck_out_tongue:

Okay, I’m not a literary critic and I don’t really know what New Criticism is, but I’ll waste your time anyway.

From what you describe, it sounds a little like a deconstructionist approach. In other words, it doesn’t matter what the poem says, let’s try and figure out why it says that, or what it’s really trying to say. This would be like ‘riddles’ in the poem. Sometimes this means trying to understand the author’s perspective, life history, subconscious, what he or she had for breakfast that morning, etc. Or you try and look at language patterns for potential symbols and figure out that it could really be about death instead of a box full of kittens.

That’s my guess anyway; I’d guess it’s called ‘New’ because it is a new direction to go in when you’re looking at poetry that’s already been picked apart on matters of structure, grammar, and the ‘obvious’ meaning, and possibly already interpreted in a modern context; there’s not much else to do but try and find out some more.

Of course, there’s no guarantee that even knowing the author intimately you’d be able to deduce the thought processes that went into the work. For some, it doesn’t matter whether it’s ‘correct’ as it’s just one more way of interpretation and if it brings you some knowledge, then it’s a good thing. In my opinion, it doesn’t make much difference to know what inspired the poem as you may often take your own meaning from it.

There are a lot of examples where the perceived meaning is different from what the author was thinking about.

I know that “What You Give” by Tesla was ‘about’ the death of the writer’s dog. Yet it doesn’t mention tail-wagging or jerky treats anywhere; instead it has a chorus like :
“It’s not what you got, it’s what you give
It ain’t the life you lead, it’s the life you live”

And the recent song “Closing Time” (don’t know the group’s name) sounds to most listeners like a song about going to singles bars every weekend and never getting anywhere; the video (famously had two synchronized cameras on a splitscreen) told a similar story, but the writer has said that it’s about the premature birth of his son.

“I know who I want to take me home, I know who I want to take me home …” was intended to describe the child wanting to go home with his parents but having to stay in the hospital; of course the author acknowledged that that’s not something most people relate to, and thus the song is a sort of reinterpretation of his own feelings.

well, hopefully someone who actually knows something will come along by morning.
panama jack

Only what you give, only what you give, only what you give …

See panama jack, this is where I get confused. It would seem that in order to delve deeply into a poem and discover it’s true meaning you would need to know about the background of the author.

However, all the information that I find on new criticism tells me that actually, new criticism is precisely the opposite of what you have said. It is supposed to be taking the poem as art for the sake of art. It does not matter about the artist’s life experiences. In fact, the artist in incidental. New criticism apparently values the structure, the grammar, the metaphors.

It seems as if to criticize in new criticism form, you have to completely dissect the poem stanza by stanza, line by line, possibly even word by word, to discover what the author is trying to say. Maybe I am trying to make this more complicated than it really is.

I picked one of my favorite poems, [the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls] by e e cummings to see if I could do it with that one and I think I may have it but I’m not sure. It appears that cummings is saying that the world of the ladies is analagous to candy (manufactured, innocent, disgustingly sweet, addicting, lacking substance).

Is this even remotely close to a new criticism review of the poem?

The band in question is Semisonic.

Before I heard that the song was about the birth of his son, I had the hardest time figuring out how the line “This room won’t be open til your brothers or your sisters come” fit into a song about bars. Makes sense now – the womb won’t be open until they have more kids.

evilbeth, it sounds like you’ve basically got it. It’s not as scary as it sounds – in fact it’s probably what you did in most of your high school lit classes. Does the term “close reading” ring any bells?

What you want to do is pay close attention to the form of the poem – rhyme, alliteration, imagery, the connotation of individual words – and how these features lead you to an interpretation of the poem as a whole. For instance:

Great start. Now ask yourself how you know this: how does cummings create the ladies’ world, and which words and phrases give you clues to its nature? How do you know that being analogous to candy is a bad thing in this poem?

Keep an eye out for combinations of words that seem incongruous at first glance (“furnished souls,” “angry candy,” et al.) – you can have a field day exploring the implications of phrases like these. Also, pay attention to the poem’s structure (in this case, cummings is obviously playing games with the traditional sonnet – what are the similarities and differences, and why is he evoking this poetic form at all?)

Hope this gives you some ideas.

If your teacher is in fact a deconstructionist, don’t bother trying to figure out what he/she is talking about. It can’t be done, and it doesn’t matter.

Deconstructionist criticism is an easy A. Interpret everything as an example of how the heterosexist, patriarchal white male establishment is silencing the voices of the natives/Marxists/lesbians, and you will ace it every time.

I graduated during the time this was getting started. I sat thru a course in which I literally did not understand a word the instructor was saying, and aced the course by using the words ‘semiotics’ and ‘hermenutics’ a lot in all my papers.

So I was wrong, but now I think I understand it in a very simple way.

It’s a little like cloudwatching. Okay, you’ll have to stretch it a bit, but it seems like when looking at clouds different people will pick up on particular aspects and thus one calls it a horsie, and someone else thinks it’s a whale.

So are you in fact trying to discover what the “anonymous” author was intending, or are you trying to get an impression based solely on the language (in which case it doesn’t matter necessarily what the author intended)? How much of your own ideas are you expected to bring into it? (It seems unavoidable, but if it’s art for art’s sake is the intention to examine it in a more universal sense or not?)

One could almost interpret the “Cambridge ladies” as favorable to their lifestyle if one values comfort and doesn’t want to worry about far away things (remove the un- from beautiful, take out “both dead” and if you had no idea who cummings was, you might almsot believe it).

The candy idea does seem to be pretty good at any rate.

I just knew Fretful Porpentine would come through for me! (At least, I hoped!)

Thanks panamajack, Snooooopy, FP, Shodan! I think I understand it now. We discussed it in class a little more today and I think I’ve got it!