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Carrol, Granted that "literal" was not le mot juste for what I was trying to say, but your explication is silly. Being literal does not mean focussing on the letters in a word. A literal meaning is simply different from a metaphorical or symbolic meaning. Diana Sent from my iPod On Feb 22, 2010, at 7:15 PM, Carrol Cox <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > Diana Manister wrote: >> >> Dear Nancy, >> >> I think it's counterproductive to be strictly literal about meanings >> in poetry. > > Probably not possible. And if one wants to try to be literal, the > place > to start is with "literal," which if understood literally means > focusingon the letters, their sounds, the progression of those sounds, > etc etc. It would be the equivalent of geting so close to Picaso's > Gurnica that all the lines and shapes disappeared and all one was > examing were the brush strokes. As soon as you go by that 'level,' > youcan no longer be literal, for words literally focused on are > literally unitelligible. Look at "strokes" above. Does it refer to > strokes of an oar, a medical condition, parts of love-making, parts > of a > lashing abut the fleet in the Royal Navy of the early 19th-c, > instances > (as in "strokes of luck"), a misprint for "sokes" as in "stoes the > fireplace") or for "spokes" (as in a wheel), and so forth. (These are > the kinds of difficulties, incidentally, that those who cry for a > "literal" interpretation of the Constituion purposely ignore, for to > take them into consideration is to show their hypocrisy.) To escape > the > trap of literalism means putting the letters, and thus the word, in > some > context, that is to identify the genre of the sentence, or larger > unit, > in which the word appears. (This is one version of what is called the > hermeneutic circle: one must understand the whole to understand the > parts but the whole can only be understood by understandin the > words. It > can be either a vicious or benevolent circle. And at that point it > really becomes complicated.) > > Carrol >