The Malay pantun has become a poetic form without a viable system of interpretation, perhaps for no greater reasons than its brief form and overtly sententious closing lines. In the following essay, I will attempt to show how an adequate critical approach for Malay poetry may be built by making use of Roman Jakobson's observation that poetry is self-focusing and ambiguous (1960: 370-371). Umberto Eco's developments on Quinn's distinction between a dictionary and an encyclopedia will provide further conceptual tools for building a solution to the long-standing problem of pantun meaning (1976: 262-264).1 The pantun is an extemporaneous form of poetry found in Malaysia and Indonesia. Its most frequent variety consists of four lines arranged in couplets, each line having four word clusters made up to two or three syllables.2 The first couplet, known as the pembayang maksud 'foreshadower of intention', describes the world of nature. In contrast, the second couplet, which is termed the maksud 'intention', most often presents a direct, if not sententious, observation on the social and moral world of man. The problem these couplet terms create is that while being suggestive of a mutual, semantic relationship, the most common critical opinion has argued to the contrary. The majority view is that there is no necessarily meaningful link between the two couplets; only final rhyme and optional assonance and consonance are set in the pembayang maksud to be continued in the maksud. The minority view is that there ought to be a connection of meaning, at least in better pantun.3 For the practicing critic, the classroom teacher, or student facing examinations, these two views are substantially identical. The handbooks assume that a pantun's meaning is explicit and primarily confined to the maksud. There are virtually no explications of the thought or meaning of a pantun nor is there a canonical list of 'better pantun' which might presumably have a meaningful relationship between their couplets. A further complication is that pantun are anonymous. While their poets are known at the moment they create — for the moments of creation and Semiotica 57-1/2(1985), 87-99.