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.
Here are two of mine on the subject...
The miserly poet
The poet who declaims his opinions
in obscurely wrought puzzles
leaves me cold.
Mental games of cleverness
proclaim hollow virtuosity
and touch nothing.
Meanings buried in too-clever references
and elliptical allusions are still-born,
leaving only signposts to nowhere.
If I struggle to decode the signs,
will there be that flash of insight
to reveal a new world?
I puzzle and probe this tortured language,
teasing out its meaning --
but find only opinon,
dressed in obscure intellectualism.
Neither hand nor heart was engaged
in this clever mind game.
These shuttered phrases are ungenerous
give little away.
Tight and miserly,
they withold meaning.
This self-seeking game would matter little
if the poet was not
held up as a National Treasure.
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Obscurity
Obscurity in a poet
is a cardinal sin
as is stating the obvious.
Poets live dangerously -
poised between
the obvious and the obscure.
........................
Gillian Savage
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