Well, the educators and their prejudices are quite another story 
-- I have little time for the homogenisation of poetry, or the assertion (nay, command) that this is the one and only way to write poetry, that this is obsolete and irrelevant, that these are the rules and if you break them, you have not written a poem. What the academics -- and a good number of poetry critics -- fail to realise is that "rules" in poetry are only trends, conventions accepted according to popularity. Without the rule breakers, the avant garde, poetry like all else in the world would remain in stasis, and what's the point of that?
Now, obscurity. I'm not advocating obscurity merely for its own sake. That to me is like a scientist who writes only in his own lofty jargon so as to seem more intelligent than anyone who isn't "in the know" while actually failing to say anything that hasn't been said better -- and understood -- a thousand times before. Often, saying something plainly is the best option ("the roof is on fire"), however there are some things that are more complex, that require exploration on the part of both the poet and the reader and that are damaged by bald statement as that closes the idea off to further thought. Some things should not have a full stop.
That doesn't mean that I excuse bad writing, however it's incumbent upon the reader to determine (and with close reading it should not be too difficult) whether the "obscurity" (I really dislike that term) is deliberate and leading to a concept/set of concepts or whether it's just plain nonsense. It's perhaps also the prerogative of the reader to decide that he/she doesn't want to follow the steps required and thus decide at the outset that it's not worth bothering, therefore it's nonsense -- however I tend to think that if just one person comes to my poem and takes meaning from it, in such a way that it's obvious they've connected and not just extracted meaning from the ether, then my job as a writer is done.
To my mind, what many people deem "obscure" in poetry simply taps into my preferred way of communicating -- taking pleasure in the journey without requiring knowledge of the destination.
-- I have little time for the homogenisation of poetry, or the assertion (nay, command) that this is the one and only way to write poetry, that this is obsolete and irrelevant, that these are the rules and if you break them, you have not written a poem. What the academics -- and a good number of poetry critics -- fail to realise is that "rules" in poetry are only trends, conventions accepted according to popularity. Without the rule breakers, the avant garde, poetry like all else in the world would remain in stasis, and what's the point of that?Now, obscurity. I'm not advocating obscurity merely for its own sake. That to me is like a scientist who writes only in his own lofty jargon so as to seem more intelligent than anyone who isn't "in the know" while actually failing to say anything that hasn't been said better -- and understood -- a thousand times before. Often, saying something plainly is the best option ("the roof is on fire"), however there are some things that are more complex, that require exploration on the part of both the poet and the reader and that are damaged by bald statement as that closes the idea off to further thought. Some things should not have a full stop.
That doesn't mean that I excuse bad writing, however it's incumbent upon the reader to determine (and with close reading it should not be too difficult) whether the "obscurity" (I really dislike that term) is deliberate and leading to a concept/set of concepts or whether it's just plain nonsense. It's perhaps also the prerogative of the reader to decide that he/she doesn't want to follow the steps required and thus decide at the outset that it's not worth bothering, therefore it's nonsense -- however I tend to think that if just one person comes to my poem and takes meaning from it, in such a way that it's obvious they've connected and not just extracted meaning from the ether, then my job as a writer is done.
(02-15-2012, 11:53 AM)Erthona Wrote: Of course such things as Beowulf, kenning, or even Lord Randall, will, from a contemporary perspective seem obscure, but I can assure you they were not for the people of that age. Instead of being obscure, they were reflective of that ages way of communicating.I knew you were old, but I didn't realise you had firsthand experience of Beowulf's origins :p
To my mind, what many people deem "obscure" in poetry simply taps into my preferred way of communicating -- taking pleasure in the journey without requiring knowledge of the destination.
It could be worse