This is a really curly question for me.
1. I don't like notes. The poem should stand for itself.
2. But there are good poems that are fully powerful only to a small number of
people because most readers will lack some (often small) item of context or
background.
2a. And that can be worse for those who live in one place than another. Places
that have, or are felt as centres for, large poetry-reading populations tend to
ignore anything that needs awareness of another cultural context. At the same
time those who are based in these 'centres' tend to assume that those elsewhere
will know, or should damn well learn, what is needed as context for their own
work. (So US readers expect that fiction from elsewhere will be adjusted for
their comprehension, but it is expected that Australian readers will adjust to a
US text without editorial change.) If you want your poetry published/read in
the large populations, it needs to be comprehensible to them, even if what set a
poem going is local to your own culture. It is even the case that Sydney
knowledge is felt to be more 'central' in this sense than that of other
Australian capitals.
And there are all sorts of other specialisations, of course, which give rise to
a poem that will be strong if you know and may pass you in some respect if you
don't. There are so many possible variations on 'a decent education' that we
can't even assume that 'any educated person knows...'
3. The compromise I end up suggesting to students is something like: if the poem
needs a note for everyone but yourself, it is probably not publishable until you
have a devoted following;
a strong poem should probably be able to stand without a note at least if it is
published in an appropriate journal (one which is likely to have a comprehending
readership);
if necessary, a note at the back of the book will probably then make the poem
accessible to a less selected readership, without making a mess of the page(s)
on which the poem itself appears.
But all those 'probablies' reflect my discomfort about it.
Aileen
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|