Pinsky’s praise of difficult poetry last week is commendable in its way. He serves up a hodge podge of interesting verse that requires something back from the reader–more than what most celebrations of NaPoMo attempted. That said, he doesn’t really go much further than that toward making the argument for difficulty. He seems to define …
The poems and interviews in the latest Shenandoah eviscerated me (in a good way, as opposed to the cockney slang “gutted” or some form of seppuku). The following portion of an interview with Claudia Emerson particularly resonated with me: Sarah Kennedy: Two terms, “accessibility” and “difficulty,” crop up in discussions of current poetry so frequently …
nce upon a time, there was a Young Intellectual Poet who lived with his friends in a beautiful tower. He loved poems, and read often. One day, he read a Great Poem that imparted to him a deep sense of mystery. Assuming the poem itself must actually be a mystery, he set out to solve …
Here’s a test for the GRE: Bad is to Accessible as Good is to ____________. Thanks to one of my longtime favorite etymology resources (besides the expensive OED, which I still don’t own), here are the antonyms of synonyms and synonyms of antonyms for “accessible” and related words–i.e. some possible opposites of “accessible” to consider: …
By now, I have heard many poets complain about accessibility in poetry, and how it waters down the art. In fact, I have always firmly believed that poetry is about communicating an experience through art. The reader necessarily has to bring their faculties to bear, and maybe do some work. But beyond some pretty basic …
