If there were a buzz word to label my favorite poetry of this
millennium, it would have to be "accessible," a word that is often
confused with its ugly cousin, "simple." These are not synonyms, of
course. "Accessible" means the poem tickles before it punches, laughs
before it brings you to your knees in tears. "An accessible poem, "Billy
Collins writes, "has a clear entrance, a front door through which the
reader may pass into the body of the poem . . . " (xiv). Subtlety,
imagery, and playful yet precise language are all characteristics found
inside, but clarity and understanding are the docents. Abstractions,
opaqueness, and difficulty are, quite simply, uninvited guests.
"Accessible" poetry can be misleading. To some critics, it is easy,
monotonous drivel written in plain language and choppy prose. To some
readers or would-be poets, it is a license to say any damn thing and call
it a poem. What is not recognized so quickly, however, is that the best
"accessible" poets always make it look easy—the way Michael Jordan made
walking on air seem possible—when, in fact, their talents are in their
deceptive simplicity. Their poems possess a kind of clarity and grace that
invite new readers to listen at the doors of poetry, which have been
bolted shut for centuries—and beneath that apparent ease is always a
transcendent theme or idea that sneaks up on readers like laughter at a
funeral. We don’t think it should be there, though it is—and we are
secretly very glad to be able to finally understand and enjoy what we’ve
read.
So when William Logan writes in Poetry magazine that "The best
poetry has often been difficult, has often been so obscure that readers
have fought passionately over it" (413), I can’t help but vomit a little
in my mouth. "Best" is completely subjective, of course; however, I have
seldom fought with my brethren over a poem’s obscurity. Imagine the
tug-of-war: "I love that I totally don’t get this poem." "No, I love it
more because I understand it even less!"
Logan means well and I won’t begin to tackle his bruising intellect and
understanding of poetry with my flabby mind and foolish sarcasm, but to
say that "The beauty of poetry is in the difficulty, in the refusal
of the words to make the plain sense immediately plain . . . " (414) I am
forced now to take a shot of Pepto-Bismol. I am overcome with the fear
that poetry will slowly crawl back into the damp closet of the academy
where the "best" poetry is defined by the most obscure—where the sun never
shines and where people never enter, except to retrieve, perhaps, that
ancient pair of shoes that hardly fits anymore.
I want poetry to live in the real world, to remain outside where people
can see it and hear it. I want it to stay open all night long like a
drugstore—not for junkies, but for people like me and you who need a
clean, clear and accessible shot of verse once in a while to make the day
seem a little lighter, not darker— and certainly not more difficult.
