However, people also recognize poems because of the that represents poems. The , whether or not it has anything to do with the and what an individual was taught in school, also defines a poem and its characteristics. For example, Gertrude Stein's The Geographical History of America is written in , but if her work was rewritten in a , a person could be led to believe that her work is poetry. However, if a physics book were written in stanza format, one could not associate the physics book as a poem. The reason behind this is that a poem must obtain the physical characteristics of a poem as well as the characteristics of the content of the material.
“How to Recognize a Poem When You See
One,” which details Fish’s ideas about the roles that interpretive communities play in constructing the meaning in
the texts that they read.
social construction of meaning in his article “How to Recognize a Poem When You
Fish’s statement that “if the self is conceived of
not as an independent entity but as a social construct whose operations are delimited by the systems of intelligibility
that inform it, then the meanings it confers on the texts are not its own but have their source in the interpretive
community (or communities) of which it is a function” (276)?
Does the reader make up the text he is reading?
demonstrates that we objectively acquire knowledge based on our respective interpretive communities. The problem with this view is in how one would get from point A to point B. Specifically, it exists in the method in which a person would be able to objectively acquire knowledge. The traditional post-modernist position will assert that anything a person acquires in terms of knowledge will be strictly textual.. What a person reads is subjective because it is written from the point of view of another person. Therefore, Fish's position lacks merit in that it is extremely unlikely that people acquire knowledge based solely on objectivity
Fish's argument becomes less plausible with the transition from objective to subjective views on how a reader approaches a literary text. The first main point declares that the way in which students read a text is to "create" the text. What does he mean exactly as to how an individual reader will "create" a text? One could take the previous statement and argue that if a reader creates what he or she reads, then it is an individualistic and object
In his essay, "How to Recognize a Poem When You See One," Stanley Fish explains that the way we construct meaning about events comes directly from the communities of which we are a part, and that meaning and interpretations are constructed by our communities as a whole.
According to Stanley Fish, "the mental operations we can perform are limited by the institutions in which we are already embedded" (229). This statement, similar to John Berger's belief that our environment and current knowledge determine the way we perceive the world, is accurate to some extent, but also leaves me with some questions. Does this mean that we, as members of communities, can never open our minds and take on the perspectives of other people? It may also be interpreted to mean that those of us that are from communities where learning is not encouraged may never achieve great things intellectually. I do not agree with these literal interpretations, and as far as I can tell, neither does Fish, but if one were to interpret his essay literally, that person might mistakenly assume a narrow mindedness, which was not meant to be the result of Fish's words, that could lead to misunderstanding and prejudice.
prove that every individual can potentially have a different experience through such lyrical poetry; depending on which “eyes” each member of the audience sees the song through, they can interpret the poem in numerous ways (Fish, 307). Thus, the question of “Why interpret?” can be answered through collecting varying reviews of any single event, for the audience creates their own story, usually based on personal life experiences. The intentions of the authors becomes obsolete, for the authors themselves may have a different interpretation every time they hear the piece, depending on what is happening in their life during that particular period of review. Over the span of one’s life, many experiences accumulate, each experience can potentially alter the person’s perception of any given event; even if the particular event is a written song, which remains constant, the individual may come to vastly different conclusions pertaining to its meaning with each consecutive interpretation.
Stanley Fish, on the other hand, seems to believe that the meaning of any piece of literature lies mainly with the reader. He illustrates this pretty grandiosely and grotesquely in his “How To Recognize A Poem.”
