Difficulty In Understanding The Poet

Lots of poetry from the past and indeed a great deal of poetry of today can be difficult to understand. From all periods, past and present, a lot of poetry has been downright opaque,
characterised by large measures of incoherent and indecipherable discourse and imagery.

Having said that, all through time some poets have been easy to
understand and some more difficult. Longfellow is easier to understand than say Emily Dickinson. There are many contributing factors as to why so much poetry is downright difficult to understand. Poetry needs to be written in language as concisely as possible and because of that meanings get lost in ambiguities the same ideas presented in a story or an essay become much clearer. Because of the nature of the beast poets must use language in fresh ways rather than use stock phrases where the meaning is clear and we understand at a glance just what they are trying to say.

Poets have many tools at their beck and call to enrich the language and connect with us at a deeper level. One of these tools is the 'metaphor' and whilst this one is a powerful tool it can make the meanings more ambiguous and difficult to decipher. And therein lies the power of the 'metaphor' most times the language of the metaphor connects with us at an unconsconsious level and speaks to us at that level. As a result we are not the same person that we were prior to 'ingesting' its meaning or intent. Someone once said 'all metaphor is poetry' and thats the truth!

Sometimes poets are often drawing their inspiration from another, more mysterious source. Carl Jung called it the 'collective consciousnes's and went on to say that rather than creating something new is merely reporting on things within this mysterious realm.
Poets are therefore trying to speak of things that are elusive and difficult and a lot of the time almost impossible to articulate through words and language.

TS Elliot had much to say on this subject he suggested that the meaning of many poems is simply there to satisfy the expectations of the reader and was unimportant. He suggested that there were poets (he implied that his loyalties were with them) whose wish it was to get rid of meaning altogether. He even asserted that poets must be difficult. Elliots thoughts aside the fashion for modern day poetry seems to be that it must be as difficult to comprehend as possible to be called poetry. In that sense much of the modern day poetry seems to be ego driven and that by writing abstruse verse one will be seen to be erudite and scholary and therefore impress people and impressing people has a very seductive power.