More on Poetry

before class 12/13/07

WCW's poems are not secret codes with meanings accessible only to those with secret decoder rings available only at Big Time University English departments for $100,000.

So if poems are not secret codes--if a poet's purpose is not to encrypt the meaning to keep unwanted readers out--then why are poems often so difficult?

Here are a few ideas. A poem's difficulty often comes from compression of language, a lot of meaning & sound in a small space. Difficulties also come from tension between sound & sense--or, to put it another way, between the poem as an experience of language & the poem as an act of communication.

The 20th century American poet Louis Zukofsky wrote of poetry as "an integral" with speech as the lower limit and music as the upper limit. In other words, poetry exists in between speech and music. If the poem becomes exclusively musical--all sound, no meaning--it ceases to be poetry. If the poem becomes exclusively speech with no music then it again ceases to be poetry.