The Fabulist (edit 3)

[Wjames]

Philip is Philip Casey? I was doing some googling, and I read his poem Daily Bread - it was very good, I hadn't heard of him before. My thoughts are those of someone unfamiliar with his work, outside of also seeing he wrote a novel called The Fabulists and reading a synopsis.

Wjames,

Thanks for your notes.  The identity of Philip seems to be more important than I thought, based on your and others' comments, so that may be something I need to work into the poem.  So I'll leave it a mystery for now.  It isn't Philip Casey, though oddly, they have the same birth and death dates.

TqB

When there's a mystery, people will try and solve it - the title creates mystery, who is Philip? 

Especially when the heart of the poem is not so obvious, which I like.

I like mystery, but if you are trying to say something specific in the poem, it may not serve that purpose.

I think that mystery can be an ally of feeling, but it is an enemy of meaning. Feeling is more important than meaning to me in any case.

Meaning is often times redundant - I don't really care who it is about or why the author wrote it, I care how it makes me feel, the mystery can let the reader imagine multiple different scenarios about who it's about or why - which can add to the work.

If I don't specifically know what a poem is about after reading it, but I liked reading it, I usually think that's a good thing - it makes you want to read it again.

To sum up, I don't think you do need to work it in to the poem - but I felt it was hard to offer thoughts on the poem if it was about something specific that I should have some knowledge of in order to understand the meaning.