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Towards the end of his life the excellent Norman MacCaig reflected on his “long haul to lucidity”. For him clarity of expression it was an abiding pre-occupation, but for other poets it is not a primary aim, and when that is the case they are likely to be pursued by a charge of obscurity. The accusation is not simply that their poems are difficult to assimilate; much poetry requires considerable effort by the reader to be understood, and even then there are likely to be alternative persuasive interpretations. Richness of this kind is a reward, not a penalty. Similarly few readers are so naive as to think that the apparent transparency of a poem implies that it lacks depth of meaning. The complaint, rather, is that they, the readers, can get no purchase on the overall drift, and that even on repeated encounters the surface remains so impenetrable that they cannot begin the task of construing it.

   Incomprehension can arise in more than one way, but most commonly it occurs when the intentions of, and the conventions used by, a writer are seriously at odds with the expectations of the reader. “Obscurity” actually describes a mismatch between the two parties, and if unkind epithets are to be traded the poet can complain of the obtuse reader as legitimately as the reader can castigate the opaque poet. Normally, though, we think of, and sympathise with, the reader’s problem. From that perspective it may be useful to consider just four of the reasons why a poem may be found obscure.

   The first is exemplified by The Waste Land and the hostility it provoked when it appeared back in 1922. Critical outrage was based on two grounds. There was firstly complaint at the fragmented structure of the poem, which seemed bizarre since few if any poets had previously used disjunctions in the text as an intrinsic part of the “message”, in this case concerning - roughly - the disintegration of contemporary culture. The second allegation was that the poem was replete with references which even a comparatively well-informed reader could not be expected to understand; not everyone knew (or knows) about the hyacinth king or pale Phoenicians or the terminology of Hindu liturgies. Both these difficulties have now been largely resolved, the first by readers’ growing familiarity with poetry that incorporates formal and syntactic deviations from traditional patterns, the second by the extensive exegeses now available. As the latter indicate, virtually all the references in the poem can be retrieved from the public domain, for though often exotic they can ultimately be identified with reasonable success. (Other poems by Eliot, such as “A Cooking Egg” and “Marina” pose rather different
problems).

   A second and quite different sort of obscurity is illustrated by Edith Sitwell’s “Said King Pompey”, in her 1930 sequence Gold Coast Customs. Sitwell’s early interest in poetry was in sound patterns, and in this she may have been influenced by Mallarmé’s dream of a “white poetry” that would bear no relationship to life, an aspiration he came to realise was impossible since language is inescapably referential. Be that as it may, around 1930 Sitwell was still largely preoccupied with verse sound, though by then some concern about the world beyond had begun to creep in, generally about cultural disintegration in echo of the Eliot theme. Gold Coast Customs had a mixed but predominantly hostile reception by reviewers, a response which Sitwell herself evidently saw as a near-riot (she was often given to exaggeration). The accusation was again one of total obscurity. Later in life, when commenting on “King Pompey Said” she wrote that ‘The poem deliberately guttered down into nothingness, meaninglessness.’ No wonder, then, that readers found no internal meaning, for there was none to find. Something analogous, in the sense of a deliberate lack of content, may have occurred in the experiments in concrete poetry in our own times, though these are easily recognisable and are less problematic since they clearly do not call for the usual mode of construing.

   A third and quite different kind of obscurity is illustrated by the “Letter to X “ type of poem. I am always apprehensive when these words appear at the top of the page and where the person addressed is apparently someone the poet knows personally. Now, we are constantly exposed to other peoples’ interactions, and can certainly be interested in how they relate. We accept without difficulty that we are most unlikely to know every detail of their background, such as what happened on that particular excursion on a Tuesday afternoon. But there are limits set by ordinary good manners as to how far two people present in a larger company continue to talk about matters from which the others are excluded. Much the same holds for a written text. Extensive recollections of all kinds of situations or events of which the reader can know nothing generate a sense of being shut out of a conversation rather than of being invited to share it, though that invitation is implicit in the act of publication. There is no reason why a poem should not be cast in the form of a personal letter, but there is a danger that the poet forgets that he is producing a literary artifact and addresses himself to the real person instead of a persona. The fault is not simply one of poet’s discourtesy, but a serious aesthetic flaw. To succeed, a poem of this genre must strike a balance between, on the one hand, the poet’s making clear that he or she is ‘writing to’ someone with whom they have a private relationship, and on the other, ensuring that enough is revealed to warrant the reader’s attention. It is a tricky exercise, and offhand no poem of this kind leaps to mind as particularly successful. The situation is quite different from the poem which carries a dedication, and where the dedication is intrinsic. “To His Coy Mistress” does not require the reader to know anything of the biography of the lady in question; he can safely assume she is attractive, and it is evident that the poet is seeking to persuade her to his way of thinking. That is quite enough. The history of the relationship is scarcely relevant, and if the reader wants to invent a background story he can do so without the slightest damage to the poem itself.

   Fourthly, consider almost any of the poems by the celebrated and highly influential John Ashbery; his “Portrait in a Convex Mirror” is often quoted as the best introduction to his work. For any reader who does not pick up a book of verse with Wallace Stevens already in mind the poem is likely to be very difficult. There is a starting point, with reference to a particular painting, which is followed by what might be called intellectual dreamwork, a sustained but highly diffuse digression which appears to end arbitrarily. There are some striking, crisp images but they have no evident connection with each other, drifting in a stream of mystical-philosophical speculation. Quasi-surrealist changes, leaps in pace and in apparent topic abound. Some commentators find in the poem a number of different voices, whose correspondence with each other is never clear. There are references to autobiographical events and memories which are left unanchored; there is a splattering of quotations. The reader is invited to a dance, but as only as a spectator, not participant. Some believe that the poem, like most of Ashberry’s work, is concerned to demonstrate the process of writing rather than to communicate, and that comprehension as normally understood is scarcely relevant - a critic who is an enthusiast for Ashberry’s poetry has written that he find about 5% can be ‘understood’ in any acceptable meaning of the term. Evidently the reader’s sense of exclusion is intended, and he can make of the poem what he will, for what is offered is essentially a play of language, a textual ballet. Whether such a degree of alienation can sustain a viable poetry is an open question; much will depend on what view is taken of the fashionable postmodemist fog.

   All these comments refer to what might be called the retrievable content of a poem, and of course there is much more to poetry than that. Nor should it be overlooked that there is commonly and quite legitimately some divergence between what the poet intends and what the reader construes. Nevertheless, it would be unimaginable folly to dismiss content, however defined, as irrelevant, and the nature of obscurity merits continued attention. The varieties cited comprise those which arise from innovations in structure and exotic references; from a deliberate lack of meaning (in any conventional sense); from excessive privacy of denotation; and those presenting a seemingly aleatory combination of images and tropes. Doubtless there are other types too. And perhaps it is useful to recall a remark of Douglas Dunn to the effect that if one has attentively read a poem six times and still failed to get a purchase, it is worth entertaining the possibility that it may be twaddle. Not an analytic comment perhaps, but a reasonable guide to practical criticism.