08-24-2016, 07:52 AM
I read this today by an author named Maria Mazziotti Gillan, and I was looking to get some thoughts from you guys on it:
"In 1980, I had to pick up William Stafford at the airport to drive him to a reading that he was doing for me at the Poetry Center. Quickly, I realized that he was very upset because a critic had called his writing "simple." During his reading he gave a brilliant talk on simplicity and the difficulty of achieving it in writing. I've always felt that the simpler something appears, the harder it is to do.
Recently a student sent me a poem she had written in response to a prompt. The poem had some good, clear lines in it, but it was wrapped in complicated imagery and fifty-dollar words. The poem also made very tentative dips toward real emotion, and then ran away from it through its use of an elaborate extended metaphor that seemed stiff and forced. When I pointed this fact out to her, she was reluctant to get rid of most of the esoteric language, and the screen she had built with deliberately obscure language. I finally went through the poem cutting it down to the bone, paring away all the obscure language and most of the complicated metaphor. This student, having been schooled in a Ph.D. literature program, felt that it wasn't a poem if it didn't have all this extra clothing on it.
...I think of my own poems, the ones I wrote thirty years ago which suffered from the deliberately obscure Greek god reference syndrome, and the ones I write today that are as direct and honest and plain as I can make them...I sometimes think that some people writing today -- whole schools of people, in fact -- are writing for five people at an Ivy League school. These are the ones who bemoan the fact that their books don't sell. They are also the same ones who denigrate Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac, that NPR program in which he reads one poem a day. They denigrate it because the poems Keillor reads are comprehensible and appeal to a large audience.
Personally, I am grateful to Garrison Keillor for that program, for making poetry available to a large number of people and for helping to overcome the stereotype of poetry as incomprehensible, that stereotype that has haunted poetry for years... Even Shakespeare wrote for the people in the pit, the ones who bought tickets to stand through the performance, as well as for the people who could afford expensive seats."
When I write, I do try to write as simply as possible, but I do fear that people might think my poems are unsophisticated. I have a friend on the other end of the spectrum who uses lots of complicated references and obscure words (they're good words, just not common). I like her work, and I think it's really good. Sometimes, I think she'll have no audience, though, and I do wonder (like the author above wonders) if she isn't hiding behind the language in some sense. I'm torn -- maybe it's just apples and oranges???
I'm wondering how you all go about navigating this issue of balancing accessibility and sophistication.
Love ya, Pigpen!
lizziep
"In 1980, I had to pick up William Stafford at the airport to drive him to a reading that he was doing for me at the Poetry Center. Quickly, I realized that he was very upset because a critic had called his writing "simple." During his reading he gave a brilliant talk on simplicity and the difficulty of achieving it in writing. I've always felt that the simpler something appears, the harder it is to do.
Recently a student sent me a poem she had written in response to a prompt. The poem had some good, clear lines in it, but it was wrapped in complicated imagery and fifty-dollar words. The poem also made very tentative dips toward real emotion, and then ran away from it through its use of an elaborate extended metaphor that seemed stiff and forced. When I pointed this fact out to her, she was reluctant to get rid of most of the esoteric language, and the screen she had built with deliberately obscure language. I finally went through the poem cutting it down to the bone, paring away all the obscure language and most of the complicated metaphor. This student, having been schooled in a Ph.D. literature program, felt that it wasn't a poem if it didn't have all this extra clothing on it.
...I think of my own poems, the ones I wrote thirty years ago which suffered from the deliberately obscure Greek god reference syndrome, and the ones I write today that are as direct and honest and plain as I can make them...I sometimes think that some people writing today -- whole schools of people, in fact -- are writing for five people at an Ivy League school. These are the ones who bemoan the fact that their books don't sell. They are also the same ones who denigrate Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac, that NPR program in which he reads one poem a day. They denigrate it because the poems Keillor reads are comprehensible and appeal to a large audience.
Personally, I am grateful to Garrison Keillor for that program, for making poetry available to a large number of people and for helping to overcome the stereotype of poetry as incomprehensible, that stereotype that has haunted poetry for years... Even Shakespeare wrote for the people in the pit, the ones who bought tickets to stand through the performance, as well as for the people who could afford expensive seats."
When I write, I do try to write as simply as possible, but I do fear that people might think my poems are unsophisticated. I have a friend on the other end of the spectrum who uses lots of complicated references and obscure words (they're good words, just not common). I like her work, and I think it's really good. Sometimes, I think she'll have no audience, though, and I do wonder (like the author above wonders) if she isn't hiding behind the language in some sense. I'm torn -- maybe it's just apples and oranges???
I'm wondering how you all go about navigating this issue of balancing accessibility and sophistication.
Love ya, Pigpen!
lizziep