Analysis Of Misinterpretation Of Children's Poetry

Misinterpretation of Children’s Poetry Poetry is meant to be interpreted in many different ways. This is what makes poetry so diverse when compare to other writings. The many interpretations of poetry is a good thing, but also a bad. Too much interpretation can destroy the true meaning of the poem. This can happen with all kinds of poetry, but it is more likely to happen with children’s poetry. Jack Prelutsky is a famous children’s poet. Prelutsky was named the first Children 's Poet Laureate by the Poetry Foundation in 2006. He spends much of his time presenting poetry to children, and sometimes even sings out his poetry. However this doesn’t mean his poetry is only intended for children. Prelutsky’s poetry does have meaning
The poem is about a person name Ebenezer Bleezer, and this person owns an ice cream shop with 28 unique divine flavors. As a child, they will only understand the silliness off the poem. As they will compare to walking into an ice cream store with unique flavors, but an adult will interpret this much more differently. In the first stanza the name Ebenezer as interpreted by an adult would mean the helping stone. In the book of Samuel Ebenezer meant, thus far the lord has help me, but most commonly referred to as the helping stone. As in the fifth line of the first stanza “28 divine creations” is well connected to the biblical meaning of Ebenezer. While an adult would call say the twenty eight divine creations are human beings, on the other hand children would consider these creations as unique flavors of ice cream. The two meanings are so widely interpreted it destroys the meaning of the
Joan Peskin of University of Toronto said “Taken to an extreme, an assumption that poetry reading is personal and natural would blur any distinction between an experience or inexperienced reader” (236). No matter how experience you are at reading poetry, there is always the chance that you let your feelings take over. When that happens, we lose all sight of what the true meaning of the poem is. Instead we let our emotions analyze the meaning of the poem. Our emotions only see what it wants to see, and this can misinterpret poetry to a great extent. We don’t truly analyze the words, and try to understand what it means. Rather we read the poem, and we gave it meanings which coincide with what we feel. Everybody feels differently, and if one person feels it this way, it doesn’t mean the other person will