Vernon Shetley and Poetic Difficulty

Vernon Shetley argues that poetry must become intellectually and personally challenging again. But part of this challenge is to chart a middle path between the opposite poles of a variety of continua of poetic practice. Or perhaps a better way of saying that is that there's a Golden Mean that exists between the too radical poetic ideals marking the twentieth century.

As one example Shetley discusses the difference between difficulty and directness, which, following Richard Poirier, he represents with T. S. Eliot and Allen Ginsberg, respectively. Adding layer after layer of mythical references distances one from the immediacy of real life, while blunt immediacy denies one the aesthetic experience that challenges readers.

Another useful example is the opposition between New Formalists and Language poets. In their extreme forms, the former avoids the inequities of the social status quo by trying to recover past modes, while the latter interrogates so vigorously that it squeezes the life out of things.