Arduity… about difficult poetry

Poetic risk in difficult/innovative verse.

Introduction.

It can be argued that any act of creative endeavour creates a degree of risk but I feel that the making of poetry entails an intensity of risk rarely found in other forms. This is because poetry has a reputation for authenticity and honesty and also because the history of verse carries with it a strong idea of what is good and what is doggerel. Indeed it is difficult to think of another art form which has a specific genre for everything that is technically poor. Poetry’s reputation for honesty also carries the risk of poets going too far with self-exposure or with the exposure of others. There’s also those poets who defy expectations by producing something apparently at variance with what has gone before and thus run the risk of critical rejection. Finally there are poets who become more and more experimental and thus run the real risk of losing an increasing numbers of readers along the way. The following aims to look at various examples of poetic risk over the last 50 years and to consider what may behind such behaviour.

Poems that risk themselves.

Some poems seems to hover on the edge of collapse whilst others play with the wavering boundaries of sense and nonsense. Simon Jarvis’ ‘The Unconditional’ threatens imminent collapse by its reliance on lengthy digression to such an extent that the reader often forgets what is being digressed from and readerly exasperation is only staved off by the brilliance of the language used. Paul Celan’s later work explores the idea of a poem on the edge of itself as it explores and celebrates the limits of language.

The Confessional Risk.

Geoffrey Hill is not thought of as a confessional poet yet there are at least two occasions where he discloses more than the reader may be comfortable with. The first is from poem 109 in the “Triumph of Love” sequence:

Since when has ouir ultimate reprobation
turned (occulos tuos ad nos con-
verte)on the conversion or
reconversion of brain chemicals-
the taking up of serotonin? I
must confess to receiving the latest
elements, Vergine bella, as a signal,
mystery, mercy of these latter days.