coconutshell limbs

I am in the process of major revision of three poems. It’s much easier than I thought it would be. I was thinking about adding endings or visual accompaniment to a work of art and how permanent that always feels. For example, reading the end of the Harry Potter series made all of the possible ending I had in my head conform to the ending that J.K. Rowling wrote. Similarly, when I saw the first Harry Potter movie, the actor who played Hagrid became what Hagrid looked like in the books even though I had a very different picture of him in my head when I began the trilogy. I find it a bit sad that literary creations are the product of someone’s mind that is somehow untouchable by other people. Anything that is written down (besides purely factual documents) is made in someone’s mind. The outcome of story is made-up. So, why is my ending any less true than the author’s ending? Why is my image of a character less correct than the author’s image? Sure, it’s their work, but if the characters are to exist in my mind as well as in the author’s, then I can manipulate them as much as the author. This thought led to the thought that poems really can end in anyway that the audience wants them to. If the audience is willing to abandon the belief that an actual event exists on the page, then the meaning can change without guilt or constraint…but perhaps that’s not possible. We like our stories and trust our storytellers.