[John Isbell]

"quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus". Horace, Ars Poetica, l.359.

[Michael F]

Oh, that’s a really good question, Max.

The only thing I can think of is to be sensitive to the multiple meanings and valences of images and words -- and to give latitude for the mysterious workings of the Muse.

(I feel that's all fuzzy-headed and not very helpful, but it's the best I can do...)

[Mark McDonnell]

Hey Andrew S

It was an annoyingly blunt response to your point, so I'll try to elucidate. I think Roger summed up the various ways we might think about the idea of obscurity very well in post #12. But really I think the original question in this thread is setting up a sort of false dichotomy: MacLeish's quote 'a poem shouldn't mean but be' is followed by the question of whether obscurity is necessary for good poetry. This presupposes that for a poem to 'be' it has to be obscure to one degree or another. I really don't agree with this. A 'universally loved' poem is a rare beast indeed, because it's easy for us to forget, in these hallowed halls, that most people are either utterly ambivalent towards, or actively dislike poetry (or think they do). But leaving that aside, if we look at poems that are universally loved, at least among the most generically conservative (with a small 'c') 'poetry fans', we get this:

Britain's favourite poems (a poll conducted in 2002 by the BBC)

1 If --, Rudyard Kipling 1865--1936

2 The Lady of Shalott, Alfred, Lord Tennyson 1809--92

3 The Listeners, Walter de la Mare 1873--1956

4 Not Waiting but Drowning, Stevie Smith 1903--1971

5 The Daffodils, William Wordsworth 1770--1850

6 To Autumn, John Keats 1795--1821

7 The Lake Isle of Innisfree, W.B. Yeats 1865--1939

8 Dulce et Decorum Est, Wilfred Owen 1893--1918

9 Ode to a Nightingale, John Keats 1795—1821

10 He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven, W.B. Yeats 1865--1939

11 Remember, Christina Rossetti 1830—94

12 Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, Thomas Gray 1716—71

13 Fern Hill, Dylan Thomas 1914—53

14 Leisure, William Henry Davies 1871—1940

15 The Highwayman, Alfred Noyes 1880—1959

Now, apart from 'Leisure', which is a bit crap, I don't think this list is too shabby. Yes, even 'If', which is a great piece of theatrics and contains some really good advice! The only 'obscure' poem here, I think, is the Stevie Smith, in that it is an overarching metaphor which makes no attempt to explain itself (in this way it's the poem most like your own about the suicidal youth). But it's so short, pithy and emotionally true that it clearly resonates. A poem like 'Dulce et Decorum est', with its viscera and didactic irony, could never be accused of obscurity, but come on. It's fucking amazing.

I really don't think 'obscurity' has any place in poetry. It's the wrong word. To obscure something means to deliberately hide it. Why would a poet want to do this? Lots of poems are difficult to understand, but if a poem is difficult to understand it should never be because the poet has purposely made it that way, it should be because the poet's genuine response to his/her exterior or interior world is complex. To take an example that has been given in this thread: Blake's 'prophetic books' are difficult to understand. Yes. But this, surely, wasn't a deliberate artistic decision on his part, in fact I imagine quite the opposite. The books were his genuine, obsessive in fact, attempt to articulate his worldview as thoroughly as possible. Now, he was too much of a genius/madman to realise that he'd done this already and far more successfully in the 'Songs of Innocence/Experience' and the 'Marriage of Heaven and Hell', but that's beside the point.

To paraphrase Oscar Wilde's lovely line 'There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book.
Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.” I would say say the same about poems and the value we place on their 'obscurity'. They are either good poems or bad poems. That is all.

Everyone should just have a very highly tuned bullshit detector, basically.

[Duncan Gillies MacLaurin]

Originally Posted by Mark McDonnell

4 Not Waiting but Drowning, Stevie Smith 1903--1971

I've seen a waiter like this, but have yet to see the poem.

Duncan

[John Isbell]

Another thing about that list is the evidence that it generally takes decades for a poem to become universally loved. Which is no real surprise. And nothing older than Gray makes the cut.
It would be interesting to see an American list.

Cheers,
John

A purely US list seems hard to find. Here's a list by Ranker Books - "Best Poem of All Time" - which is less exclusively British, but with some overlap, notably Kipling:

1 If -
Rudyard Kipling

2 The Road Not Taken
Robert Frost

3 All the World's a Stage
William Shakespeare

4 Stopping by Woods On a Snowy Evening
Robert Frost

5 The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
T. S. Eliot

6 The Divine Comedy
Dante Alighieri

7 Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
Dylan Thomas

8 The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

9 The Waste Land
T. S. Eliot

10 O Captain! My Captain!
Walt Whitman

[Mark McDonnell]

Duncan - ha. Didn't spot that!

[Andrew Szilvasy]

Mark,

I find a poem like "If--" to be mediocre at best. It's meter is so perfect it puts me to sleep, and I've never come back to it and found something deeper or more interesting. Similarly, from the American list, 'O Captain My Captain' is such a bore to me (and I like Whitman).

Anyway, we're talking past each other in one sense: these poems here are 'universally loved' (and here we're seeing that's still not true) by the subset of poetry readers, right? That's, sadly, a small subset. My glib comment sets up a "No True Scotsman" of sorts because in my sense a "universally popular poem" would have to be way more expansive than anyone could prove (i.e. ask my sophomores [or Year 11] what they think of 'To Autumn'). Such a broad expectation of popularity to prove worthless in a real discussion.

Let me end on agreement: there are many beloved poems that are justifiably beloved, even if I think "If--" rubbish and think it takes until #6 to get to a great poem that is the work of a great poet (Tennyson and Wordsworth are great, but those aren't their best works; Smith is a very good poet, but I don't know her well enough to call her great, nor do I love that poem).

To paraphrase Oscar Wilde's lovely line 'There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book.
Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.” I would say say the same about poems and the value we place on their 'obscurity'. They are either good poems or bad poems. That is all.

I agree with this sentiment wholeheartedly. Though, for my taste, the best poems are the ones that reward re-reading. What makes re-reading worthwhile? Seeing new things, which, for me, usually means a density (in a loose sense) of form and content. That often means finishing a poem and not "knowing what it means" because it can sustain multiple meanings. Like Keats said about what he called Shakespeare's "negative capability": "being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason." 'Prufrock' appears on the American list, and it's a hard poem, but one that is (to me) beautiful even when you don't know what's happening. It rewards re-reading--I teach it every year and find something new and interesting I never thought of.

[Max Goodman]

I agree with those who find "obscurity" a poorly chosen word. I'm glad that hasn't prevented people from understanding my meaning or fruitfully discussing the issue.

Originally Posted by Mark McDonnell

I think the original question in this thread is setting up a sort of false dichotomy: MacLeish's quote 'a poem shouldn't mean but be' is followed by the question of whether obscurity is necessary for good poetry. This presupposes that for a poem to 'be' it has to be obscure to one degree or another.

I didn't mean to set up a dichotomy. Clarity is generally acknowledged as a virtue (it's often the one most in my mind when I comment on poems in workshops here); I thought MacLeish's quote a helpful way to acknowledge that it isn't necessarily the foremost virtue and present the issue as complex.

Originally Posted by Andrew Szilvasy

This. A universally loved work is a bad poem; an entirely comprehensible one, ho hum.

I think this overstates a good point about entire comprehensibility. It isn't necessary, but I disagree that it is boring.

Thank you, John and Micheal, for trying to be so specific, and thank you, John, for reminding me of Seven Types of Ambiguity. I have never read it, but now I will.

[Andrew Szilvasy]

Originally Posted by Max Goodman

I think this overstates a good point about entire comprehensibility. It isn't necessary, but I disagree that it is boring.

I chose my words a bit poorly. Let's say, instead of 'entirely comprehensible,' something more akin to 'easily plumbed.'

The best poems don't reveal everything at once.

[Jim Moonan]

"The best poems don't reveal everything at once."

Thinking out loud:

True, but that does not necessarily mean there must be an element of obscurity in a poem for it to be good.

As others have said here, obscurity is more or less, is a matter of degree. It could be said that the more nuanced the poem, the more spare the language, the more obscure it's meaning is to the reader, no?

It's good to see this thread finally coming around to recognizing that the word "obscurity", when it refers to placing value on a poem's worth, is a dubious trait at best. The subjective interpretations of the word dominate. But objectively, yes, a poem can be enhanced by a degree of obscurity -- though for some casual readers that's a turn-off.
If we equate obscurity with vagueness then it is to be avoided at all times. If we equate it with things like subtlety or complexity, then it becomes an attribute of writing that, when executed skillfully, can draw the reader closer and closer until what's obscured is revealed.

....................

Thinking more about it, it is possible that one of the main reasons poetry is almost a niche art form is due to the obscurity that is inherent in it -- at least the good poetry. Not the Hallmark card variety.

Thinking further, isn't abstract art obscure by definition? Isn't Finnegan's Wake obscure literature? Jazz music defined by it's obscurity?

It's a tough call.