My father sat at the back of the college classroom while the professor interpreted his poem “The Cancer Cells.” Dad was a prominent poet during the middle 50 years of the 20th century. On that day, Dad was at this college to read his verse and to participate in class as an established poet.
The professor concluded his interpretation. “The Cancer Cells,” he opined, is about the spread of communism across Eastern Europe. Then he called on Dad.

Dad stood. “Well,” he said, “I wrote ‘The Cancer Cells.’ I have to say that it has nothing whatever to do with the spread of communism across Eastern Europe. What the poem has to do with is what it says in the poem. I saw vivid color photographs of cancer cells, in large scale in a magazine. The images were intensely beautiful. However, the images are also death. It’s the contrast between their beauty and their power to cause death that moved me to write the poem.”

The professor paused for a moment and then said to the class, “Well, notwithstanding what was just said, the poem is about the spread of communism across Eastern Europe, and now if you will please turn to p. 182.... ”

Dad was not called on to speak for the remainder of that class. “Dikkon,” Dad said to me later while he mused on this event, “the truth is that once you publish a poem, it doesn’t belong to you anymore.”
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