Paradoxes and Oxymorons | No Absolute Meanings
A widely published poet and fiction writer,
Semansky teaches literature at Portland Community
College. In the following essay, Semansky argues
that Ashbery’s “Paradoxes and Oxymorons”
is a poem with indeterminate meaning.
Many people resist reading modern poetry because
they think it is difficult to understand. They
believe there is a hidden or secret meaning that
must be ferreted out and that if they do not know
the code, they will not understand what the poem
is about. That poems are “about” something is an
idea that much modern and contemporary poetry
itself has questioned. Some recent literary theorists
maintain that there is no absolute “aboutness,” or
theme, to literary texts, that ultimate meaning itself
is an impossibility. Indeterminacy, these theorists
argue, is the nature of literary...
[The entire page is 1570 words long]
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