Poetry and Shameless Obscurity
Please join me in observing, won’t you, that poetry is shameless.
Go ahead, take a breath and say it. It’s a more charitable word than “pretentious,” which is an alternative used only by our enemies.
There’s something about this, my chosen art form, that reeks of desperation: Not just the reasonable and excusable desire to be beautiful and observant, but also the vanity of wanting to be profound, of wanting to be mysterious, perhaps of obscurity and indecision.
I thought maybe I would make this a historical essay about how clarity per se is a wholly modern value, and that we have to reach beyond its popular appeal to find some of poetry’s deepest roots. There are many domains where you can be unclear, and some are very useful. Working in theoretical physics and material sciences, that require decades of practical application? Try whipping that out at a party!
But at least, in those cases, the obscurity is useful, a technical requirement that goes with those rigid conceptual paradigms. The obscurity of poetry, its willingness to be absolutely obstinate and a pain in the ass, is, to be very frank about it, more or less artificial. In fact, I’ll risk yet another step toward the bright light of honesty: perhaps obscurity is part of the poetic soul. Isn’t it possible that this is one of the key differentiators of this art form, that it’s willing to be opaque and challenging and inaccessible?
And anything that separates you from your peers will gradually come to define you. Poetry may be defined, in large part, by the struggle.
This is, of course, a connection between what we do and who we are. Poets admit obscurity into our work because it infects us, deeply and incurably. This is a way to embrace it.
But beauty also thrives in paradox, and you will see this paradox in every call for poetry to be clear, to be accessible, to be childlike. This is, after all, an art form that embraces haiku and sestina, that elevates Billy Collins and TS Eliot.
So I suppose that today, I will be complex and effortless. Tomorrow, I will be simple and obscure. The next day, perhaps I will write something in colors, on a canvas, and yesterday I will paint a poem with small steps on the earth. I will have gone looking for poetry. I will forever have not found it.
