New additions: Hugh Selwyn Mauberley / Introduction to Ezra Pound (amended and fixed) / Ambiguity (amended again) / Conceptualist verse / Keston Sutherland's Odes to TL61P (Ode 2) / Keston Sutherland's Odes to TL61P (Ode 1 - updated) / Poetic Risk / Ambiguity (amended) / Wallace Stevens' The Rock / The state of poetry - a debate / Geraldine Kim / Explaining Difficulty / Impenetrable Prynne? / Your contribution.
Difficult poetry, why bother?
Incomprehensible, wilfully obscure, elitist, self-indulgent, self-regarding, hopeless, not 'proper' poetry. These are just some of the terms used to describe difficult verse and yet this material is rich, complex and deadly serious. Bothering about difficult poetry means taking a little more time than usual to work out the complexities and allowing yourself to be changed (for the better) in the process.
The Difficulty Toolkit.
Many readers of poetry feel intimidated by the words and references used in difficult verse. This site aims to remove that sense of exclusion and open up difficult or innovative poems to a wider audience.Our Difficulty toolkit section contains articles which identify and describe the various strategies that readers may use to broaden their understanding and overcome that sense of exclusion.
Difficult Poets.
We also have articles on poets who have a reputation for difficult work. These include Paul Celan, Geoffrey Hill, J H Prynne, and David Jones, all of whom have produced work that demands and rewards attention from the reader. From the other side of the Atlantic we have articles on Wallace Stevens, Charles Olson, John Matthias, and Geraldine Kim. All of these sections need to be expanded upon and we would welcome contributions from other interested readers.
We are especially keen to receive contributions on John Ashbery and Keston Sutherland to augment our current content. Those wanting to make a contribution should contact John Armstrong - the address is at the bottom of this page.
Reader contributions.
We're very keen on user contributions because we see this as an important counterweight to material produced by academics. If you have strong views on any 'difficult' poem or poet then we'd be more than happy to publish them.This is an essential part of this project as too often readers who are interested in the work are deterred by the dense and complex comentaries from the academy. As of Jan 2011, we have two articles by contributors- on Wallace Stevens' 'The Rock' by Jim Kleinhenz and on Gerladine Kim's 'Povel' by Vance Maverick.
The rewards of difficulty.
Although difficult poetry is controversial, the fact remains that our finest poets (Geoffrey Hill, J H Prynne, John Ashbery) continue to write poems that aren't readily accessible and require attentive reading. Paul Celan is generally acclaimed as the finest poet since the Second World War yet his work is soaked through with ambiguity and cryptic allusion.
Paying attention to this kind of work is immensely rewarding and has the potential to change the way we think about language and the world in general. Difficult verse requires concentration and a readiness to find things out but we hope that this site will demonstrate why the effort is worthwhile.
The difficulty manifesto
Difficulty in poetry has a bad reputation in the Anglo Saxon world because we're attracted to a 'common sense' view of the world and because we have a clear idea of what the arts should do. Novels and plays should tell stories, poems should express emotions, paintings and sculpture should depict things, pieces of music should have a recognisable melody.
Whilst we don't wish to denigrate this view, we do feel that there is a place for creative expression that requires some thought and that 'difficult' works have a greater degree of power and depth than most of those that are more readily accepted.
One of the main problems with difficulty is its relationship to theory and the academy. Academics have latched on to difficult artists and writers and subjected their works to the closest critical scrutiny. Because this scrutiny is often expressed in obscure or technical terms, important but difficult works are 'fenced off' from ordinary people.
We're committed to taking difficulty out of the academy and putting it back in the social world.