Introduction.
It can be argued that any act of creative endeavour creates a degree of risk but I feel that the making of poetry entails an intensity of risk rarely found in other forms. This is because poetry has a reputation for authenticity and honesty and also because the history of verse carries with it a strong idea of what is good and what is doggerel. Indeed it is difficult to think of another art form which has a specific genre for everything that is technically poor. Poetry's reputation for honesty also carries the risk of poets going too far with self-exposure or with the exposure of others. There's also those poets who defy expectations by producing something apparently at variance with what has gone before and thus run the risk of critical rejection. Finally there are poets who become more and more experimental and thus run the real risk of losing an increasing numbers of readers along the way. The following aims to look at various examples of poetic risk over the last 50 years and to consider what may behind such behaviour.
The Confessional Risk.
Geoffrey Hill is not thought of as a confessional poet yet there are at least two occasions where he discloses more than the reader may be comfortable with. The first is from poem 109 in the "Triumph of Love" sequence:
Since when has ouir ultimate reprobation
turned (occulos tuos ad nos con-
verte)on the conversion or
reconversion of brain chemicals-
the taking up of serotonin? I
must confess to receiving the latest
elements, Vergine bella, as a signal,
mystery, mercy of these latter days.
The second is from Poem 16 in the part of "Scenes from Comus":
I did not anticipate the marriage
that I destroyed. It was not then the fashion.
So, the poet who normally deals in either dense abstraction or the wonders of nature is here confessing to mental health issues and a failed relationship. The first admission carries (at least for Hill) much greater risk and it is interesting to note how some critics have been keen to point out that the work has deteriorated since "The Tirumph of Love" which happens to coincide with Hill finding some relief from his illness. As a reader I find this kind of observation both crass and offensive but it has taken hold and signals the kind of risk that self-exposure entails. It's interesting to note that much less is made of Hill's first marriage and his admission of culpability hasn't been taken up.
Perhaps a greater risk was taken by Ted Hughes in publishing "The Birthday Letters" which is an account of his relationship with Sylvia Plath. Since Plath's suicide in 1963 the nature of this relationship has been the source of immense controversy and debate. It is not my intention to dwell on the various arguments put forward but simply to observe that Hughes did not need to intervene and in doing so ran the risk of further approbation.
Reading "The Birthday Letters" is similar to watching a car crash in very slow motion. We know what's going to happen, we have a view as to why it happened and the dismal saga unfolds before us. Hughes goes into great detail, his pain is palpable and every element of Plath's decline is presented in unflinching detail.
Robert Lowell is perhaps the most famous confessional poet. He wrote about his own mental health issues and (more controversially) used correspondence from his estranged wife in the "Dolphin" collection. Elizabeth Bishop (Lowell's friend and admirer) described this as "cruel" but Lowell's critical reputation was such that this device was mostly forgiven by the critics. Self-exposure which also esposes someone else carries a double risk, there is the risk of being misinterpreted or disliked as a person and the risk that the exposure of the other will be seen as simply self-justification which isn't really what poetry should be about. In re-reading Lowell over the years I find that he becomes less and less likeable as a person and less and less interesting as a poet.
With Hughes, we are presented with someone who is virtually helpless in the face of his wife's problems and who does his best to offer support and assistance. We don't, of course, get Plath's version of events although there have been many eager to condemn Hughes since her death and it would certainly have been safer to maintain a dignhified silence instead.
The Innovative Risk
"Crow", "Brass" and "The Mercian Hymns" were all published in 1971 and each volume constitutes a risk in terms of the poet's career.
Prior to "Crow" Ted Hughes had primarily been seen as a nature poet and one of the best poets of his generation. The publication of this volume cast a different and darker light on things. The language used is plain and straightforward but the subject matter (God, existence, mortality) threw Hughes into a much more theological and philosophical vein reflecting his interest in mysticism and the neo-Platonics. The main risk was that "Crow" would be seen as some kind of airy-fairy m ystical whimsy but the strength of the language used and the enigmatic nature of the themes won most critics over and it is now considered as one of the poet's finest works.
Jeremy Prynne's "White Stones" collection had established him as a talented and intelligent voice and it is perfectly reasonable to assume that he could have spent his career in this vein. "Brass" however marked a significant rejection of what Prynne sees as the mediocrity of the British mainstream and declares his intention to collide head-on with this "unwitty circus". The last forty years may be seen as that collision in progress with Prynne losing more and more readers as he becomes more terse and cryptic. It is also fair to say that the poetry mainstream has been as keen to reject Prynne.
Having taken this stance, Prynne now has very few readers and his publications rarely get reviewed but those readers that remain are incredibly devoted simply because he is the most interesting poet writing today.
Prynne's motivation for such a wholescale rejection is unclear but the following lines do give some indication of the strength of his feelings:
..............................No
poetic gabble will survive which fails
to collide head-on with the unwitty circus:
These lines (from "L'Extase de M. Poher") seem to be saying that the rejection of "conventional" verse is essential to the survival of poetry even though that poetry may be seen to be "gabble". The result of this risk is that Prynne is either seen as the most important poet currently writing or as simply incomprehensible. This is not a risk that many poets would take and persist with- there can be no doubt that Prynne is sincere in his determination.
"The Mercian Hymns" is in prose and mixes the past (Offa) with the present (Geoffrey Hill's childhood). The main risk is the form which is at variance with Hill's previous work but there is also a reference to "rivers of blood" which is taken as expressing support for the racist views of Enoch Powell. As a poem the work is an astounding meditation on England and Englishness, the time-shifts and the various personalities are used with enormous dexterity and the collection established Hill's reputation as one of our finest poets. The "rivers of blood" reference is deployed reasonabloy obliquely, there are no overtly racist phrases or overtones but this continues to trouble some critics. This is unfortunate because holding right wing or distasteful political views does not diminish a poet's worth. Hill has also courted controversy by replying abusively to his critics within the content of "The Triumph of Love" which now seems rather childish. It's interesting to note that the most offensive ("bugger you" and "eat shit") ripostes are not in the "Selected Poems" collection of 2006 whereas "The Mercian Hymns" is printed in its entirety.
Paul Celan also courted conroversy with collections that became increasingly dense and cryptic in the last ten years of his life (1960 - 1970). This change was announced in the Meridian Address which has been picked over by scholars and critics ever since. Prior to 1960 Celan was best known for "Death Fugue", a brilliant indictment of the role of the German people in the Holocaust. The later poems have a similar theme but are expressed in radically ambiguous and allusive ways which has caused many to dismiss them as incomprehensible. Celan was clearly determined to pursue this course as successive volumes become more and more terse in the face of the negative reaction of the critics. This was a risk worth taking as these later poems are now widely viewed as some of the most important verse of the twentieth century.
The final risk taker is David Jones who won prizes and critical acclaim for "In Parenthesis" and then went on to publish "The Anathemata" which is both brilliant and incredibly difficult. Eliot put Jones in the same group as Poind, Joyce and himself. W H Auden considered "The Anathemata" to be the best long poem of the 20th century yet it (and Jones) have virtually disappeared from the poetry "map". One can only speculate if things would have been different if Jones had kept "The Anathemata" to himself. Would Jones have been recognised as a great poet? Would "In Parenthesis" still be recognised as the finest poem from World War 1? These are the sort of risks that 'difficult' poets take.