One thing that intrigues me is how we are beckoned over that threshold of difficulty, particularly the semantic difficulty of some post-modernist work, when neither sound nor shape helps us through the multiple meanings of 'meaning'. There is an element of trust here - that the reader's time will not be wasted. The poem can look like a random pile of words. Sometimes critics can encourage trust (Vendler's essays on Jorie Graham), but what is it that tempts us out onto the ice when we're on our own? There isn't one answer of course, but I'm aware that sometimes I'm just tempted to go flip-flip-flip through a magazine: that looks random, facile, boring whereas someone like Ron Silliman might encourage me to slow down. Not that I read wholly for meaning - I love formal qualities! Maybe I haven't read enough po-mo, or more likely I'm just incurably shallow.
Oh, and
To say that one doesn’t know what a poem means, if one understands its literal sense, is to say that one doesn’t know why it’s saying what it’s saying. The reader asks, “Why am I being told or shown this?”- that's how I've felt on the few occasions I've read a Kooser poem. I didn't realise he was 'difficult'!
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