Your "Ode" Interpretations

I keep finding myself becoming more and more immersed in odes.  Odes, as some of you may know, are formal longer poems that address its object by praising it.  But they are really more than that.  They make you feel as if you are there gazing at the object being illustrated.  It is as if you are feeling the emotion that the author felt as they looked upon it.  Odes are able to put you in that tranquil peace of mind, making it feel as though you are sometimes in a whole different world or place as you are reading it.  I believe that odes let you picture your own understanding of the objects being portrayed even if the author was looking at or describing something completely different.  That is the best part!  How you interpret them is up to you.

For example, Percy Shelley does an exceptional job of fully describing what he is praising while still letting you interpret the object yourself.  To do this he uses admirable descriptive words to give you the sense of awe he is in.  This helps instill this awe in his readers as well.  With the five sections in his ode, "Ode to the West Wind", Shelley is able to keep you anticipating what is to come next.  He uses each stanza to depict what he calls the “West Wind”.  I believe that this is what is outstanding with odes.  Shelley has an idea of what he considers the “West Wind” to be and he portrays is to you as he feels, but he also leaves some aspects up to your imagination.  Overall, he finds this “West Wind” to be a higher, creative power.  In addition to his descriptive words, Shelley is able to convey this “West Wind” to his readers by using a serious tone.  From his tone, you can tell Shelley is genuine about his thoughts and writings.  He wants his readers to respect the “West Wind” as he does.  Even as he presents his serious tone, he lets further interpreting up to his readers.  We, as readers, are allowed to construct our own meanings from his words and imagery. 

Through odes we are able to experience items that we may never be able to view or experience in real life.  Poets, like Percy Shelley share their knowledge and understandings to help us create our own personal images.  They make it seem so easy to do.  It seems as if we just have to find an item that we admire, pick up a pen and paper, and put it into some sophisticated writing.  It cannot be that hard right?  Well, for those of you where that is true, you enjoy yourselves; but for others like me, I think I will just keep on being absorbed in other’s odes, like Shelley’s, which are really able to speak to me.