And I don't particularly want to see myself quoted, completely out of context!

I think "comprehensibility" can have at least two distinct meanings, and I suspect that the meaning invoked here earlier simply means that it should be possible to understand what the sentences are saying. That doesn't mean, having understood what the sentences are saying, there is no room for interpretation of ambiguity in that which has been clearly said. For example, it is comprehensible to speak of "the sound of one hand clapping," in the sense that the words are pretty clear, but that doesn't mean that there isn't a great deal of mystery and incomprehensibility and room for the reader to supply his own ideas in considering the notions evoked by that comprehensible phrase.

Depth, texture and mystery are not inconsistent with using words that people can actually understand, and too much obscurity can be a mannerism one quickly grows tired of and sees as a ploy to create the illusion of depth on behalf of someone who hasn't much to say and therefore finds it convenient to hide behind an aesthetic that excuses him from having to say anything at all while pretending that much has been said.

It's not at all hard to think of great poems that are perfectly clear and comprehensible, though full of texture, subtext, nuance, and all the other good stuff most of us want from poetry. Is there any doubt that the speaker in Western Wind wishes he were home in bed with his girlfriend? That Marvel is trying to seduce his mistress? Are these poems weaker because they are so perfectly and obviously comprehensible?

Of course, Roger. There is endless nuance, thank god! But the cry for monolithic comprehensibility too often degenerates into another sort of argument that creates thin work. Meaning is far more complex than such cries of outrage on behalf of that mythic "general reader" give it credit for. And I don't think it any mystery around here that Mr. Hill actually likes a bit of out-and-out incomprehensibility on his dog-eared poetic menu. I defend it as a matter of course. One man's dark is another man's (or woman's) light. Now we've come full circle.

Jayne, what's out of context? I quoted your whole paragraph. It was a preposterous statement that cried out for a light poke in the ribs.

Nemo

One way of responding:

http://readalittlepoetry.wordpress.c...by-wendy-cope/

But what does it mean?

The jester walked in the garden:
The garden had fallen still;
He bade his soul rise upward
And stand on her window-sill.

It rose in a straight blue garment,
When owls began to call:
It had grown wise-tongued by thinking
Of a quiet and light footfall;

But the young queen would not listen;
She rose in her pale night-gown;
She drew in the heavy casement
And pushed the latches down.

He bade his heart go to her,
When the owls called out no more;
In a red and quivering garment
It sang to her through the door.

It had grown sweet-tongued by dreaming
Of a flutter of flower-like hair;
But she took up her fan from the table
And waved it off on the air.

'I have cap and bells,' he pondered,
'I will send them to her and die';
And when the morning whitened
He left them where she went by.

She laid them upon her bosom,
Under a cloud of her hair,
And her red lips sang them a love-song
Till stars grew out of the air.

She opened her door and her window,
And the heart and the soul came through,
To her right hand came the red one,
To her left hand came the blue.

They set up a noise like crickets,
A chattering wise and sweet,
And her hair was a folded flower
And the quiet of love in her feet.

What Nemo said on comprehensibility.

I consider "light verse" to have something to do with an attitude the verse strikes, sort of a smoking jacket in a rather elegant drawing room, maybe with a few drinks under its belt but still capable of tossing out zingers for the entertainment of the very interesting, very easily bored people already at the table, and maybe it says less than it seems to say, and maybe it says rather more, and maybe it's all balls, really, but isn't it entertaining and clever, and yes, we'd love another bottle. Yes, that was a Chateau Lafite Rothschild '73. Let it breathe....

I also agree with Nemo on comprehensibility. And I have to drag over something Mary said in the thread on Holly Martin's piece this week, because she reprises the thought in this thread:

I define [light verse] as poetry that's meant to be comprehensible to people who don't have an MA in literature.

This kind of gives away the game, doesn't it? It implies that enjoying, understanding, and comprehending poetry is something reserved for an elite class. Well, I ask this: Who writes poetry for people with MAs in literature?!

Not having an advanced degree, I hereby pooh-pooh what I think is worse than a bad definition of light verse...~,:^)

Rick

There is an interesting discussion of Light Verse in the introduction (not the preface) to this book on Gavin Ewart. It covers Milne's (and later Amis's) attempts to define Light Verse through characteristics of tone or subject matter. It also treats Auden's radical expansion of the term, which gets into the 'comprehensibility' issue.

RE defining terms... I recently covered a conference on counterfeit and falsified pharmaceuticals for the magazine I write for. Panelists and attendees spent half a day trying to agree upon which is which. They ended up reaching no agreement (...again. This is a long-standing quandary in official circles).

Meanwhile, criminals around the world were doing brisk business and would surely have laughed their asses off at the regulators and law enforcement authorities unable to find first base (primarily because of their insistence that there must be a first base).

RM

That's a nice essay that Frank posted. I'll accept his discussion of the civil poet, though I think in his effort to create a stark contrast with vatic poetry he has done some injustice in his description of the latter. The essay also betrays a telling anxiety--he says early on that to view Ewart as a mere "light versifier" is far too restrictive. This reveals that almost in spite of himself he looks at "light verse" as a pejorative rather than descriptive or generic term ("versifier" being an even more pejorative word); it would be much easier to talk if we could separate generic terms from value judgments. Auden's definition, while interesting, seems much too broad to me.