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Sunday, September 24, 2006

The Problem Of Accessibility

The Problem Of Accessibility "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 requisites, I've always felt that poems should be accessible. " ~Robert Peake

I often enjoy reading Robert's blog, but I must disagree with him on this point. I see the standard of accessibility as a burden that handcuffs any artist, including poets. To say that what one writes must be accessible is no different that insisting that poetry be written in strict form. Or even that it must be written in free verse. Such limitations are all nonsense.

I don't feel, as some will tell you, that what Billy Collins writes is evil. I do indeed enjoy much of his work. But I an quite frankly tired of the lame game in poetry, those who would insist that it must be this way or that or else!

If poetry is about communicating an experience through art, as Robert firmly believes, why is it the poet cannot choose whatever medium he or she sees fit to best carry their artistic message? Do we tell paint artists they "must use only oils" never pastels or water color? That it must be on canvass? Do we tell musicians that you must play music only in minor keys? That you must have a set tempo and only work with certain instrumentation otherwise it is not art? That photographic art must be in full color no black and white allowed?

I do enjoy Billy Collins. But if all the poetry I read was in the same mold, how boring would that get? And where then would the art be?


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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Michael,

Thanks for your thoughts.

I suppose I do not see a decision to be accessible as stylistic. Rather I see, the medium of language to be fundamentally about one thing: communication. To me, poetry can attain a very high realization of the possibilities of language because it can begin to capture the almost ineffable qualities and sensibilties of human experience without having to necessarily communicate a story or argue a point.

Yet fundamentally, the purpose is to communicate. If everyone responds, "huh?"the poem has failed. I find myself saying "huh?" or "partial-huh?" far too often. Hence the post.

Interestingly enough, it sounds like a lot of what people object to in the idea of accessibility is the notion that it necessarily dictates stylistic constraints. I'm not so sure. To take a page from the realms of prose fiction, I would say that Faulkner is "accessible" -- his work is able to be accessed, and in what he attempts to communicate he succeeds. You have to put in some work to get to the deeper experience available through reading his work. But the houses he builds have doors on them. But a lot of postmodern poems are all walls and the occasional boarded up window. But no doors. Except maybe a trap door, through which the author with his own vast array of uncommunicated experiences can open with a secret code.

It reminds me of this quote:

"I gave up on new poetry myself thirty years ago, when most of it began to read like coded messages passing between lonely aliens on a hostile world."

-Russell Baker

Michael A. Wells said...

Hi Robert...

Interesting choice for your quote. I don't normally associate Russell Baker with poetry. I think of him as more a humorist, prose writer and critic. In this day and age I suppose we are all the latter.

If I want to write something in which clarity is of the utmost importance, I would do so in prose. There I believe precise meaning is important. I don't see poetry that way at all.

The famous red wheel barrow poem by William Carlos Williams seems on the surface pretty straight forward. Yet, I doubt that many who read it really saw exactly what he wrote about. I believe no matter how straight forward poetry seems, poetry is a collaborative effort between the writer and the reader. Our understanding of what we see in verse is impacted by our varied life experiences. Two people are not going to see the
same thing unless their life experiences have been identical.

I have, over the years enjoyed hearing countless adaptations to poems I have written. These remind me how different each of us are and how our language is limited by our experiences in life. Sharing poetry can be a very public thing or it can become a private act between two consenting parties. But to me, poetry is so very different than prose, and I am expressly appreciate that aspect of it.

I rather like what A.E. Houseman said about poetry:

"Even when poetry has a meaning, as it usually has, it may be inadvisable to draw it out... Perfect understanding will sometimes almost extinguish pleasure."

Anonymous said...

"Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood."

-T.S. Eliot

Michael, I like the notion that poetry is a collaborative effort between writer and reader. And I agree. Which is precisely why I think we need to reclaim the word accessible from the baragge of artifical meanings currently ascribed to it: simplistic, commonplace, trite. And we need to describe simplistic, commponplace, and trite poems as such -- rather than lumping them together with other poets who have chosen to write in a style unencumbered by symbolic meaning and obscure subtext.

I really like the Housman quote as well, and agree that poetry must necessarily convey a meaning beyond prosaic understanding. Clarity of idea is certainly best argued through prose. But conviction of experience, including layered implications and explosions of ambiguous, ulterior motives through poetic "strangeness" and delightfully precious "non-sense" -- remains the domain of poetry. The opportunity to experience this is something the poet must provide. And do so without need of a plastic decoder ring.

How poetry strikes non-poets (like Baker, for example) is essential to how poetry will move and change in the future. These days, nearly all the readings I attend are in the company of other poets. Is that a sign of health in the art?

Some more musings and whimsy here:

http://robertpeake.com/archives/213-If-Accessible-Poetry-Is-Bad....html

Michael A. Wells said...

You closed with, "How poetry strikes non-poets (like Baker, for example) is essential to how poetry will move and change in the future. These days, nearly all the readings I attend are in the company of other poets. Is that a sign of health in the art?"

In thinking about this I wonder is or should art reflect a normal marketing model? By this, I mean do we expressly want art marketed in the way we would a box of breakfast cereal? Created based upon the results of some focus group and what is believed to be what the consumer wants? Is a sign of how healthy an art is directly tied to a consumption quotient? I am sure there are some who judge it strictly on these terms. I don't.

Anonymous said...

Michael, good point about the commercialization trap other art forms like film have obviously fallen into. That said, a non-commercial poetry was much, much more widely enjoyed fifty years ago than it is today. I have a little story about what I think may have happened. Pure fantasy, of course. Look for it tomorrow on my blog.