The Willfully Obtuse

I've gotten back into reading poetry recently, and part of my interest was catalyzed by reconnecting with one of my friends from high school who is an accomplished poet. In fact, she wrote a solid collection of poetry titled Blood Almanac. If you're interested, you can buy it by clicking HERE.

Anyway, I recently purchased a chapbook that was recommended to me, and it jogged my memory of why I quit reading a lot of poetry.

The poetry is just willfully obtuse.

I understand playing with language, but when a poet goes on a symbolic space walk, he or she needs to stay tethered to something, some form of clarity, some form of words that congeal together to create meaning. I don't mind working for the meaning, but I don't want to be too taxed.

Maybe I'm just old fashioned and like "easier" verse.

While I do appreciate poets who can be difficult to unpack (take Eliot's "Wasteland" that requires an Encyclopedia of World Religions, the Bhadavad Gita, an Orphan Annie decoder ring, and a divining rod to help you read it), I gravitate to folks who keep it simple and play with the beauty, challenges, and memories of everyday existence--folks like Mary Oliver, Wendell Berry, Stephen Dobyns, William Stafford, Galway Kinnell, Hayden Carruth, W.S. Merwin, Sherman Alexie, Rodney Jones. Hell, I like also Sandberg and William Cullen Bryant.

For those readers out there looking down on Bryant, go ahead try to write some righteous blank verse, his best form. I dare ya. Go ahead.

The willfully obtuse make poetry a unhappy book report, an exercise in cognitive dissonance.

If I had my way, books of poetry would be sold at supermarket checkouts. But some of that stuff is just inaccessible to us, the hoi polloi.