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Would we ask composers
to use fewer notes

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or for dancers to rely on
only familiar movements?

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We may not enjoy or even
understand what they do,

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but that's hardly a
call to relegate them

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to pre-approved
melodies or expression.

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If artists aren't encouraged
to expand the horizon of what's

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possible for human
imagination and experience,

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perhaps we are better
off leaving that

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to Hollywood or in the care
of our elected officials.

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I find that the common
assertion that poetry

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has no significant audience is
merely the uncritical sentiment

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of its sad detractors,
eager to persuade us

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that what they don't
care to understand

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doesn't actually
exist or that it's

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too difficult, that it's too
pretentious, that it alienates,

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et cetera.

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Perhaps it is not the
goal of a work of art

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to make its audience
feel at home, to assuage,

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to reflect, or validate.

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When you next hear
a broadcaster cite

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the highly readable
qualities of some new book

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or read a review
harkening to poetries

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and accessibility,
you see, they're

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trying to gain your
confidence by assuring you

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of your own lack
of intelligence.

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And don't worry, plenty of
callers will phone in to agree.

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When you hear this,
take heart that poetry

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is thriving, refusing
to disclose itself

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in ways that belie its form.

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This is one of its
strengths, not a weakness.

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Though, to be sure, obscurity
and difficulty are hardly

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ingredients for
quality in poetry,

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let alone for
effectiveness or the power

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to bewitch, or
delight, or amuse.

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In other words,
don't misunderstand

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me to say that willfully
obscure poetry is of the finest

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quality and poetry easily
approached is necessarily bad.

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Hardly.

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In fact, nowhere more than
the poems of Dickinson,

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or Celan or Lorine Niedecker
are the simplest words

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put to such disarming
and strange effects.

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What I mean is that, finally,
what we most want from poetry,

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to just mean one thing and to
come out and tell us directly

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what that one thing
is, well, poetry

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is unable to
accommodate that wish.

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It befuddles, vexes, seduces
and never fully reveals itself,

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all while laying inert
there on the page before you

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or vanishing into the air
in which it was spoken.

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But now, look, like those
whinging critics deriding

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MFA programs as the pernicious
corruptors of creative writing

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as we know it, even I have
fallen into that old trap

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of defending poetry myself.

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As Jarrell says,
quote, "poetry does not

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need to be defended any
more than air or food needs

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to be defended.

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Poetry has been an indispensable
part of any culture

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we know anything about.

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Human life without some form
of poetry is not human life,

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but animal existence," unquote.

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But if poets are supposed to
veer towards that which they

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do not know or understand,
to make something out

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of that grappling, as
I've argued, why should we

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expect anybody to
follow along in such

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a strange, murky endeavor?

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We can't expect
that, nor should we.

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In fact, to expect some kind of
dutiful, assiduous readership

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is also a kind of elitism.

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I'm not sure poetry
deserves readers,

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actually, which I
know is odd to say,

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I realize, after all the
railing against the dogma

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of accessibility
I've unleashed here.

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But actually, a reader's
intelligence, patience,

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and inquisitiveness
really are gifts.

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And following Auden,
when he says, quote,

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"every poet has
his dream reader,"

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I've come to feel like any
careful reader, whosoever, is

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a dream.

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Perhaps what AR
Ammons says is true.

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Quote, "having once experienced
the mystery, plenitude,

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contradiction, and
composure of a work of art,

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we afterwards have a
built in resistance

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to the slogans and propaganda
of oversimplification

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that have often contributed to
the destruction of human life.

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Poetry is a verbal means to a
non-verbal source, unquote."

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And if you choose to
follow that grappling

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in mystery, plenitude, and
contradiction as a reader,

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well, it is a gift.

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And it is a poet's
luxury that you

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might wish to follow
along and make meanings

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along any particular
thread of words

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forming stanzas, those verbal
means to a non-verbal source.

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And truly, a bright,
curious reader is a gift.

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The good news is that in
poetry, they are inextricable.

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What you get from the poem is
precisely what you give to it,

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and that's lovely.

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At times, fatiguing too,
no doubt, but still lovely.

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Accepting the award for
Distinguished Contribution

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to American Letters at
the National Book Awards,

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John Ashbery said
of poetry, quote,

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"it is fun, though it
isn't supposed to be.

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But somehow, the difficulty
is embedded in the pleasure,"

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end quote.

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Surely, this can be the case
with reading too, as when

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a poem truly disarms us.

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One of the definitions
of "accessible"

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is "open to the
influence of," as in,

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a mind accessible to reason.

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To be open to the influence
of the unknowns of a poem,

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that is the kind
of accessibility

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I hope to encourage here,
not for poetry to accommodate

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our expectations, but
for us to accommodate

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the strangeness of what a
poem might present us with.

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