-----Original Message-----
From: R I Caddel <[log in to unmask]>
To: british n irish poets <[log in to unmask]>
Date: 11 May 1998 16:28
Subject: understanding / meaning / difficulty


|This is not intended as a defence of difficulty for its own sake - far
|from it - it's very hard to earn that depth and not many do. I'm simply
|suggesting - at rather great length, I'm afraid - that what I get back
|from a poem or a poet is directly related to what I put in. These days,
|pooped at the end of another library shift, my ability to respond is
|strictly limited, it takes an age to get going. Often I end up
|"understanding" or finding a "meaning" which is completely other to my
|expectation - that's the reward.


I am grateful to Ric for the whole posting, which I got twice btw, and for
this quote in particular. I realise I may actually have advanced the defence
of difficulty for its own sake or something very like it on a
being-published foray into the joys of reading maggie o'sullivan - this isnt
an advert - honest - from pages

i think Ric's _it's very hard to earn that depth and not many do_ is wise in
the extreme - so who said all extremists are bad? - and i agree that what
you get out is related to what you put in. The pleasure of it is that what
you get out is greater than what you put in if you can initially manage to
overcome work-poopedness. Maybe we need poetry power stations.

Difficulty takes many forms. There's the difficulty talked about here where
you look at a line and think what? (I think that's a quote from a very early
Dylan album cover) But I have also lurked with wry pleasure in endless
debates about the meaning of say a Frost poem where the literal meaning is
seemingly clear as could be and everyone's saying, in one way or another,
yes, but what does it mean?

So I come back to Ric's _that depth_. Not difficulty for its own sake, no,
but if you don't find difficulty of some kind let the alarms ring because
it's likely convenience poetry

L

PS Hope to see all in Glondon at svp to see Alaric Sumner and Carlyle
Reedy - her first gig in AGES - upstairs 3 cups sandland st wc1 8pm -
tonight & first call for next week same time place Anne Waldman and Andrew
Schelling briefly over from Colorado performing together their collaborative
work





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