A Writer's Notebook, Day Six-Hundred-And-Seventy-Nine

I want to pick up from some of what I was discussing last night, as I think some of what I mentioned about meaning is unclear and can be misconstrued.  I do not mean that I am not responsible for imbuing my work with intentional meaning, or that I do not have purpose in what I want to communicate, rather, I am acknowledging the reality that their is far more meaning in a work that I cannot control than what I can intend to put in.  This is true both in terms of my own role, in that their are many ways in which meaning is created by a writer outside their direct awareness or control, and I often find that poems have aspects to them that are far more interesting than I knew I was considering, but still reverberated with meaning that resonated with my original intent.  That is, the process of writing a poem brings out more meaning, whether I consider that something I am adding unconsciously or just a part of what it is to create in this way and likely in most others.  At the same time, their is also the meaning that is applied by the world or a specific reader, the meaning or meanings that come from outside of me, and that may not be present in the work when it is created, may only become a part of it after a time and changes in culture alter how the work is seen and read.  Many works come in or out of fashion or change their meaning based on the context they are read within. 

As a writer, I think that my goal is to assemble meaning in language, and that requires a degree of being open to the fact that I cannot control all of the meaning that my words carry, cannot even predict it all.  Attempting to be too constricted, to make it impossible for any secondary meaning to sneak inside is a futile effort, in the extreme, but it is also important to be aware of the messages a work conveys, or at least to attempt to be clear within the work about that intent, even if it may not always succeed in every way.  But, I also know, in particular with poetry, that it is very often by going the opposite way, by releasing the need to control the specifics of meaning, that a poem can become more, can gain meaning that is a result of my feeling free to just explore and play and create whatever I think is fun or beautiful at that moment.  It is a different approach, not one that is about abandoning a responsibility to mean in an intentional way, but an openness to the kinds of meanings that exist beyond that limit.  It is not, of course, the only approach I follow, but being open to that sort of work allows me to also be looser with other pieces, has allowed me to recognize that their are times when a piece of writing has the need to express an idea I did not know was coming out.