Daniel Paul Marshall offers some thoughts on difficult poetry.
O at the Edges
Musings on poetry, language, perception, numbers, food, and anything else that slips through the cracks.
Daniel Paul Marshall offers some thoughts on difficult poetry.
O at the Edges 
Great repost
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Thanks, Candice. Happy to repost – Daniel is much more of a thinker than I am.
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Ah, you underestimate yourself my friend 💓
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Great – and timely – post. I’ve been wondering lately how to write “difficult” poetry, although I’ve called it “complex” poetry. I guess there’s telling and showing in poetry. I’d like to stop telling and start showing.
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Find words that evoke emotion. Use colors and all the senses. Don’t feel that you must explain – let the reader find meaning on her own.
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I will. I have a primer: your work 🙂
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Ah, thanks, Will. And don’t avoid simplicity in language. The most complex emotions can often be captured in “common” terms. Readers don’t need to be punched in the nose constantly with heightened language. Sometimes a few taps will do the trick. 😃
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Wow! Thanks for tipping us/me to this.
For others finding it here, be sure to follow it back to Marie Marshall’s post linked to in Daniel Paul Marshall’s post too. I found much wisdom there.
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You’re very welcome. And I second that – follow back to Marie Marshall’s post.
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Marie is brilliant. Glad you found something useful there. i’ll say it again, Marie is brilliant.
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Isn’t all poetry difficult to some degree? Curious hearing his thoughts on poetry and classism. I hadn’t realized that was a thing, though I’m realizing writing, like every thing else, is hitched to access and privilege. Either way, I loved this: “No one knows the exact message a poet had in mind when they wrote a line. & yet it doesn’t stop us applying the line to contexts far removed from both the social & historical juncture at which it gasped for air & scrunched its eyes at the hard light of day.” My favorite part of poetry are the secrets I still get to keep while telling them.
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The poetry that most interests me requires a little thought. If I walk away from a poem but the words still resonate and I’m thinking about the piece, then I know I’ve read an outstanding piece. DPM also links to Daniel Schnee’s post on the creative process, wherein he discusses “diatactical thinking.” Very interesting, as are his two posts preceding this.
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I’ll have to visit that linked piece. The best combinations of words either trouble me or echo a feeling I couldn’t figure out how to describe. Usually misplaced courage.
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I just found this in my spam folder, with two of your other comments! Dunno why, but thought you’d like to know.
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That was sort of my point, we make this binary distinction, but essentially, perhaps not all, but any poetry worth its salt (not to say all good poetry is necessarily ‘difficult’) should challenge the reader, if not at the syntactical level at least the way it impresses upon the reader its meaning & subject; which you picked up on & which i am thrilled about. Thanks.
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So today is a double bonus. I discover (and Follow) both Robert Okaji and Daniel Paul Marshall. Mind expanding.
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Thank you, Bonnie!
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