Comments on: If Accessible Poetry Is “Bad”…

By: JOe

JOe — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 00:45:00 +0000

This guy misses the point and perpetrates the idea poetry is so hard. Man I can mention a hundred poems going back to the 18th century which are accessible to those who want to read poetry not chopped up prose.

By: JOe

JOe — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 00:41:00 +0000

This guys a fool. Another reason american poetry now sucks, your not talented enough! Get over it, if you can’t play Beethoven you ain’t no musician. If you can’t read Stevens you should be ashamed to call yourself a poet.

By: To No One That You Know

To No One That You Know — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:42:23 +0000

Excuse me, *T.S. Eliot (I’ve been adding that extra L sing grade school for some odd reason)

By: To No One That You Know

To No One That You Know — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:38:58 +0000

And oh yes, as for the previous Rebecca comment, I believe T.S. Elliot, indisputably one of our most difficult poets, said it best: “Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.”

By: Robert Peake

Robert Peake — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:04:01 +0000

I appreciate that you speak from the authority of your own experience. It is indisputable, and resonates with me in its way. I like Claudia Emerson’s idea that “instead of ‘accessibility,’ we might also aspire for ‘clarity’ and then strive for, instead of ‘difficulty,’ ‘complexity.’” I’m not sure these words fit all poems, but it seems a more appropriate and balanced direction.

By: To No One That You Know

To No One That You Know — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 01:28:54 +0000

I like the challenge of a tough poem. An art I’ve got to work for. An art that reveals more than what I could derive from a prolonged trip to the supermarket or sitting at home on my la-z-boy contemplating the world. If I wanted a quick giggle or a shallow cry I’d merely click on day-time television and have a go with the soaps. I crave philosophy. The profundity to elevate my spirit, to transcend my mind to knowledge of existence that’s capable of quivering me. After having immersed myself in poetry of that caliber, pieces from contemporary writers such as Billy Collins seem child’s play. I read a poem of his, which I do on occasion, and immediately I feel a delightful warmth… but seconds later am overcome by a sense of mental laziness, as if I’ve cheated my synapses of the expansion and growth it so desires to stay within the shallow comforts of my phsychological zone.

By: Robert

Robert — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 03:11:20 +0000

Collins’s use of two lines from the Belgian poet Jacques Crickillon at the beginning of “Litany” is called an epigraph. It sets forward a theme, or, in this case, proposes to take another poet’s idea in a different direction.

The New York Time gave some treatment to this poem in 2002:

http://tinyurl.com/2djt7r

I must ask: did you come here to discuss accessibility in poetry? Or to try to get someone else to do your Google-ing for you?

By: rebecca

rebecca — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 02:52:30 +0000

billy collins takes his work from other people. he puts it into his own poems and calls it good. does anyone know who he took the lines of litany from?

By: David Graham

David Graham — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 02:46:44 +0000

Thanks for reading my essay, but either I wasn’t sufficiently clear, or else someone has rather completely misconstrued what I wrote. In any case, I do not take Mark Halliday to task for his “accessibility” in the essay mentioned from *Valparaiso Poetry Review*. I’m on Halliday’s side in this specious argument, if sides need to be taken.

David Graham

By: Robert

Robert — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 10:04:02 +0000

Thanks, Patry. And thanks for stopping by.

By: Robert

Robert — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 10:03:22 +0000

Thanks, Jenni, and thanks for stopping by.

By: Robert

Robert — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 07:02:22 +0000

John, there is absolutely no need for enigma in poetry, and the fact that you use one one of the antonyms from my post sort of weakens your argument that an examination of words via the dictionary is not a legitimate way to understand what we are (and are not) talking about here. Poems meant as puzzles weaken and dilute the possibilities of the art far more than poems that are banal.