[New-Poetry] Challenge

[David Graham]

I don't see why "challenging" can't be both intellectually difficult  
as well as disturbing.  And probably two or three other things also.

One of the unexamined assumptions that often circulates when formally  
innovative work is put up against conventionally formed work is that  
*of course* the experimental stuff is more "challenging."  (A short  
jump from there to "better," too often.)  But challenge depends on a  
number of things, I'd say; and surely now that we're 100 years, more  
or less, into the Age of Stein & Pound, there's little need to keep  
applauding the boldness of poets who jettison narrative, traditional  
syntax, and so forth.  That's traditional by now, also.

Frost, to pick one of my usual examples, is teeming with  
intellectually slippery material while not being challenging in the  
sense of doing away with conventional forms.  A line like "the fact  
is the sweetest dream that labor knows" is endlessly challenging, I'd  
say.

But it's very difficult to talk about difficulty, isn't it?  In any  
case, you don't have to go far to recognize that accessibility of  
surface in itself is no barrier to poetic quality--just open any  
Norton Anthology.  Or better yet, put on some blues.


-----------------------
On Apr 15, 2007, at 4:26 PM, Bob Grumman wrote:
> You might be on to something there. I've often thought that only  
> the privileged and
> leisure class can afford to like disturbing art. In a way the so- 
> called edgy poets
> are preaching to the choir of the educated and privileged peers and  
> not to the segments
> of society they claim they want to reach. It's akin to the anti- 
> WalMart phenom...which
> is spurred by those with the means to spurn cheap housewares and  
> jeans.
> Finnegan
>
> That's an interesting thought, James, but I was taking  
> "challenging" as intellectually difficult, not as disturbing.
>
> --Bob
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David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu
Home Page:
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