Easy Words

​​The most frequent answer I get to the question, “Who’s your favourite poet?” is Mary Oliver or Billy Collins. Following up with the query
“What draws you to their work?” the response is almost predicable —“It’s easy to understand”. Personally I happen to like many of Mary Oliver’s poems, but I find them layered, nuanced and often, speculative as to exactly what her poem is saying — not necessarily easy to understand. So I wonder why would a poet and their poems be deemed favourites due to being “easy to understand”? 

As part of an online study group, I’ve been exploring an English translation of the Shinkokinshū, a Japanese literary anthology of waka or tanka poetry spanning poems written cira 905 to 1439. Many of the poems appear, at first, to be straightforwardly commenting on seasons, love, or laments. However, the more one learns about the layers of references that many of the words have in Japanese, it becomes clear that these short poems are subtle creations akin to matryoshka nesting dolls. The closer you examine these poems, the more there is to comprehend.

The idea of poems being easily understood, in my opinion, places the poet in an almost authoritative role. These so-called accessible poems are written using common parlance rooted in conventional usage. The words may be satisfying in that they reflect and validate a mainstream interpretation, but the poems inhabit an essentially safe perimeter. There is no challenge to the status quo. Stretching the boundaries of language isn’t part of the game plan, it’s more like verbal comfort food.

The role of the reader/listener in bringing their own perspective and knowledge to the poetic interaction seems largely neglected in an approach that basically says the poem always has a definitive meaning. Even in the so-called, hard sciences, individual bias is still a factor that needs to be acknowledged when interpreting data. That’s a good thing as it leads to questioning meaning, and questioning meaning leads to new interpretations, and often to new discoveries. 

Poets who have questioned how language makes meaning — Gertrude Stein, Joan Retallak, bp nicol, bill bissett — to name a few, have created new poetic forms, played with the ‘meaning’ spelled out by common words. In essence they have discovered new ways to utilize the multitude of meanings nested in language. Their work may not be easily understood, but poetry has grown and thrived because of their contributions. Reading the work of these poets has helped me grow in my own poetic practice and invited me to challenge my assumptions about how to make poems. 
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When sports are the topic of discussion, levels of difficultly comes up as part of the conversation. That might be an interesting way to think about poetry, too. I still enjoy poems by Mary Oliver and Billy Collins, I just don’t agree that easy to understand is always the best way to decide on which poets you choose to engage with.

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