A quote often attributed to famed psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud is “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar”. While there is no evidence that he actually said this the quote serves a purpose nonetheless.

What it means is that, while there is often depth and multi-layered meanings to virtually everything in the world, especially people and their words and actions – sometimes things are exactly as they seem.

I would adapt this quote and say that sometimes a poem is just a poem. Or more specifically sometimes a poem about light is a poem about light; sometimes a poem about snow is a poem about snow…etc. You get the point.

The thing about writing poetry is you get used to being psychoanalyzed through it. People assume a poem about night means your life must be dark and a poem about winter means you are emotionally cold and a poem about the sea means you are drowning somehow. Of course poets know that most of what they write has nothing to do with what people generally think but the mystique and mystery of it all keeps the reader coming back so why fight it.

I took a poetry workshop in university. 15 students were selected by a local published poet to participate based upon a portfolio of recent work submitted. One of the things I loved about the class was listening to the other participants tell me what my poems were about. They would go on and on in great detail about the level of emotion and thematic devices used to draw out the reader’s pathos. I never had the heart to tell them they were wrong – always. I never had the heart to say that the poem about the tree was actually a poem about a tree. It seemed like I would rob them of some revelation they had and that this would be bad sportsmanship on my part.

The reality is that poems are not so much a reflection of the writer as they are mirrors held up to the faces of the readers. This is the brilliance of poetry – it draws out meaning from within the audience…it does not give the audience a portrait of the author as so many hope.

This reality is the hardest part about being a poet. That you have to send your creations out into the world to fend for themselves. They are bastard children taken in and redefined by the masses while the father sits and watches helplessly as they are twisted into something other than what was intended. This is the price of creation…the loss of control; the loss of ownership. But it is a price worth paying and cannot be helped really.

I do not write for others, I write only for myself just as a parent does not choose to have a child for the sake of the people around them. The act of creation is first and foremost a selfish act (and this does not mean it is a bad thing). Just like a parent the poet is proud of his children and sends them into the world dressed in their Sunday finest for all to see, but once they step out that door he loses all control and they no longer belong to him. The difference is children usually come back but once the poem is seen by other eyes, and consumed by other minds they are gone forever.

This is why the poet must always write, to fill the void of lost children consumed by a world that cannot help but ravage them and redefine them. They are sacrifices laid upon the alter of insight.