Hello Alison,
My experience is similar... I don't have to 'understand' a poem to enjoy it.
And it's not a comprehension exercise. In fact, when it turns into a
comprehension exercise, it feels like a kind of failure [mine or the
poets] -- poem reduced to crossword puzzle. Except for that zone where the
act of comprehending has its own dynamic and I find my mind working at a
poem while I'm driving, or in the shower.
I'm not making a claim that meaning should always be plainly to hand. Some
poems shine because they defuse the regular meaning making rules. They mix
the metaphors, etc.
As to poets who scale the "resistance of their language in order
to subvert various ideas of poetry as commodity" I'm probably less kind than
you. I'm more likely to dismiss them as ideologues who are welcome to their
games.
I'm pondering this idea of 'play and be' as opposed to communicating. I have
a suspicion that these are separate only in theory. I suspect that all
poetry is a kind of communicating [purposeful or otherwise as noted
elsewhere on the list]. And that some poems 'play' too. It is tempting to
correlate play with quality. Certainly a poem it is likely that I regard as
good, is one that has played me, or played in me or that I have joined with
in the game it is playing. Or so it seems just now.
Returning to my original comments about obscurity... I'm coming closer to
clarifying my complaints. I think that there are two of them...
1. A complaint with empty virtuosity. In poetry, or elsewhere. In my
experience, 'virtuoso' is used most often with regard to musical
performances. I first questioned it when I heard a performance at the Opera
House by a Hungarian violin virtuoso. He sure could play a lot of notes very
fast. But... A wonderful talent he had. But...
So, the same with poetry. Don't you come across poems that are virtuoso?
Dazzling command of language and technique... but, so what? Are they not to
be criticised for their shortcomings as well as praised for their
achievements?
2. A complaint with those obscurities which seem to be intended to ensure
that only an inner circle will comprehend the poem. And a general
frustration with a poem that neither works its magic [does that thing that
excites me] nor makes sense at the surface level.
I'm glad that Joseph Duemer posted a couple of Emily Dickinson's poems. For
me they are great examples of poems that I won't 'understand', but which
lift me through ... what? their eroticism of language? I think that comes
close, though Emily might be surprised. They do that thing that excites me.
And the prospect of analysing them by narrative and by category seems to me
to leave corpses on the floor. For a while anyway. Perhaps the corpse will
take on new life once the analysis has digested.
Thank you again Alison for your thoughtful discussion.
Gillian
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Subject: RE: poets who eschew clarity
Gillian
I personally don't have to "understand" a poem to enjoy it. It's not a
comprehension exercise to me... and I am willing to return again and
again to poems, if they do whatever that thing is that excites me in
poetry. Moreover, the demand that the "meaning" of poetry be plainly to
hand whenever one likes is something which bothers me profoundly: it's
missing something important.
I have to agree with Robert Frost. There are brilliant "obscure" poems
as well as bad ones, and very bad poems that pretend to plain language.
Comprehensibility, to me anyway, is no indicator of quality either way.
There are poets who determine the resistance of their language in order
to subvert various ideas of poetry as commodity; in other words, their
obscurity is a thought-out philosophical or political position. I can
respect their reasons, even if I'm not one of them.
Maybe I think arguments about obscurity v. communicability miss the
point, that poetry veers in other directions entirely.
But here's a better defender of poetry than I: Paul Valery.
"Ordinary spoken language is a practical tool. It is constantly
resolving immediate problems. Its task is fulfilled when each sentence
has been completely abolished, annulled, and replaced by the meaning.
Comprehension is its end. But on the other hand poetic usage is
dominated by personal conditions, by a conscious, continuous and
sustained musical feeling.
Here language is no longer a transitive act, an expedient. On the
contrary, it has its own value, which must remain intact in spite of the
operations of the intellect on the given propositions. Poetic language
must preserve itself, through itself, and remain the same, not to be
altered by the act of intelligence that finds or gives it a meaning."
>From The Art of Poetry, Paul Valery
That is, according to Valery, a poem is made of language, but is not a
use of it.
And Paz says poetry is an eroticism of language precisely because, as the
eroticism of sexuality places reproduction in brackets, the eroticism of
poetry places communication in brackets, in order to find other ways to
play and to be.
Best
Alison
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