>Roddy invited comment on the "laziness and bad manners" of poets who eschew
>clarity. I'd say it was more a fault of ego than of laziness and bad
>manners.
Robert Frost, an exemplar surely of clarity, held that determining
whether a poem was any good or not by whether it's obscure or not is a
total waste of time (or words to that effect). Muriel Rukeyser had some
interesting things to say also about attacks on obscurity on poetry,
pointing out, for instance, that techniques which are popularly accepted
without question in film, such as jump cuts and so on, are received with
deep hostility in some quarters when they turn up in poems. I wish I
could quote it: alas, that book is in a box somewhere on the high seas at
present.
What appears obscure to one person might be as clear as a bell to
another. A poet who is making something that is allegedly obscure might
in fact be writing about something that is very complex and demands
complex responses. Not all obscurity is a hostile refusal of the reader:
it might be an invitation.
But what is meant by obscurity, anyway? Something that requires more
than two minutes of reflection? Should we just cut all "difficult"
poetry out? Bye bye St John Perse...
Best
Alison
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