[Barbara Baig]

I have been fascinated by the discussions going on recently on a couple of threads, discussions which are raising questions about what "good poetry" is and what "contemporary poetry" is. Long-time Sphereans may heave resigned sighs--"oh, no, not THIS again!"--but I thought it might be interesting and useful to move the discussions into one place (away from comments on a particular poem) and have some conversation about these matters. (I hope I'm using the correct forum for this; if not, someone please let me know.)

Shaun, your last comment on the "Picnic" thread pushed me into action here, and I hope you don't mind my quoting a part of it. You said that "a major problem with poetry today [might be that] a lot of poets tie themselves in knots by trying to make something deep, symbolic, and logical...then decry that readers don't have enough imagination to decipher them. When you think about some of the best poems (and by "best" I mean the classics that are anthologized time and again), most of them have depth, yet are also very accessible."

I agree with what you say here. It seems to me that many poets today are praised for work that is quite incomprehensible to the ordinary reader. Why is this? Why has mystifying the reader become an aesthetic value? Whatever the reasons, it seems to me that many aspiring poets believe that making sure their readers understand what they're talking about is not important. Perhaps they are afraid of seeming "too simple"; perhaps they are drunk with words; perhaps they just think it's the reader's job to figure out what they are saying. But most readers are not willing to do that. They need what I think of as a "surface" of the poem that is accessible, that makes some kind of sense (unless nonsense is intended, of course!) And then--the real difficulty--there needs to be "depth," something below the surface of the words that resonates at a deeper level than simple meaning. What techniques do the masters use to create this resonance? For instance, from Hardy ("In Time of 'The Breaking of Nations'")

Only a man harrowing clods
In a slow silent walk
With an old horse that stumbles and nods
Half asleep as they stalk.

Only thin smoke without flame
From the heaps of couch-grass;
Yet this will go onward the same
Though Dynasties pass.

Yonder a maid and her wight
Come whispering by:
War's annals will cloud into night
Ere their story die.

(Yes, there are words in this poem that we now consider old-fashioned, but Hardy died in 1928. I think it's fair to say that his language would have been clear to his contemporary readers.)

So, how do we make poems that are both accessible and have depth?

I think one thing we can do is to make that "surface" as clear as possible, to ask ourselves, "Would somebody who isn't me understand what I am saying here--and here--and here?"

I am sure there are many people here who will disagree with everything I've said. So, let's continue the conversation!

Barbara