Class Assignment and Homosexual Poems

[S_V7]

I thought about this situation and didn’t really know what I would do. Let’s say a teacher assigned a class to write a poem so that we could put them all together in a poetry book for each student. Lets say there is a practising homosexual guy in this class and he writes a poem that discusses his relationship, but a stranger who didn’t know he was gay could read it and come to a whole different interpretation. Would you include his poem in your book knowing that he probably wrote this with his relationship in mind?

 

[Starwynd]

That’s a very complicated question. Poetry is a complicated matter. There are all kinds of different styles to write poetry, from the limerick to the haiku. Then whats makes it even more problematic is the use of metaphor because people have really hard times understand metaphor and allegory.

For example, many misunderstood songs use metaphors. A song is just a poem set to music. Prince’s song “Little Red Corvette” is an elaborate metaphor for a vagina. But because people have a hard time with the metaphor, they can’t understand that is what the song is aboput and take it literally.

So it all heavily depends on how a poem is written and how it is interpreted.

 

[rwoehmke]

Some of the world’s most renowned poets have been homosexual persons. Unless a poem is obviously lewd or obscene why would anyone object?