Richard, I agree. I think that in this regard, as in so many others, a poem has to create its own expectations and then live up to them. Somehow a "difficult" poem must comes across as purposely difficult, as a poem that is not "meant" to be understood in a way that allows paraphrase or which admits the reader into the supposed inner circle for whom the poem's references are intended. But when a poem tries to pass itself off as clear, and it's not, it's a problem.
It's interesting to consider that even when a successful poem is "clear" and presents the reader with no apparent difficulties, there are aspects of the poem that cannot be paraphrased. I think this is part of the "justification" for poems that are purposely difficult, as in Jorie Graham, for example, i.e., that the poet is attempting to create a poem that doesn't fool the reader into focusing on what's "clear" but instead requires the reader to react to the ineffable quality that even "clear" poems possess beneath their clear surfaces.
Whatever one may think of such poems, their strategy demands their obscurity and it's not a failure of the poem itself if it's not simple and coherent (though a reader is free not to like that kind of poem). The reader of a Jorie Graham poem can at least take comfort in knowing that he's not "supposed" to understand the poem in conventional ways, but he's supposed to find new ways to access the poem's experience and accessing the ineffable. Just as no one minds not being able to paraphrase a Chopin etude, no one should mind not being able to paraphrase a Jorie Graham poem. But no one needs to love Chopin or Jorie Graham (though I'd be suspicious of anyone who found nothing to love in Chopin).
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