Try not to write Obscure, Abstract Poetry because it confuses readers
Abstractions in poetry can be a great concept, when used wisely and judiciously. When abstractions are overdone, the poem becomes a confusing mess for the reader that often defies navigation to a successful conclusion. When someone tells you that your poem is too abstract, they are very likely saying you have abstractions where there should be concrete imagery, or that the abstractions are not accurate and exact enough.
Some would say there has been a dearth of critique in modern poetry which has perpetuated low-quality writing across much of the field. I believe that social media is largely responsible for this. Many people today believe they do not know the difference between good poetry and bad poetry. But they should know; by using gut instinct. However, they get exposed to so much low level poetry over time that they have been told is great, they lose faith in their own judgement. If you read poetry widely then if you feel a poem is lacklustre, it probably is. The trick is to understand WHY it doesn’t excite you and then to avoid making those same mistakes in your own writing.
When you read a truly GREAT poem, it is like taking a walk through someone else’s uncluttered mind. You come away from it with new associations between images and ideas that you may never have considered before. Skilled poets do this in many ways, but one of the most basic and fundamental means is by inserting concrete imagery into the text of their poem.
Concrete imagery are words, usually nouns (but sometimes verbs and descriptors too) that create a clear, unambiguous image in your mind’s eye. Bad poems fail us in this manner. They fail to give us any actual things to imagine! In other words, there’s no “vision” there. The poem lacks concrete grounding in place, character, action, senses and so many other elements.
The abstract poet tends to fumble around, writing about the big ideas and concepts like love, death, sorrow, anger, pain, nobility, beauty, all abstract constructions. They are the froth on the coffee, the dew on the morning leaf pretty but not about to stand the test of time, words that give transient meaning. In other words, they TELL you inconsequential and abstract things because they have nothing to SHOW via active and descriptive writing.
These poets excel at writing poems that sound beautifully poetic that have well turned phrases. They add a transparent veneer of profundity, without bothering to do any of the hard work of coming close to saying anything truly profound or moving. There is not even an attempt at lucid coherence. At least if it is lucid, the reader may be able to glean some meaning.
Good poets do not deliberately complicate something just to make it harder for a reader to understand. Look at poets the ilk of Mary Oliver, Ted Kooser, Maya Angelou, Billy Collins, Jane Kenyon. The language is clear and concise. The word choice is simple and suits the poem. It does not seek to be “clever” for the sake of being clever because it is poetry. Their work is accessible and deeply moving. Unfortunately, a lot of young readers, and young poets too, think poetry needs to be abstract to “be” poetry. This has, in turn, created certain habits in the writing of contemporary poetry in online communities. Bad information about poetry in, equals poor poetry out. Poems that rely on hidden meaning, or unsubstantiated abstraction keeps something away from the reader.
Why do people read poetry? People read poetry to experience and feel and understand in ways only poetry can conjure. They read poetry to seek to make sense of the world we live in. To understand the human experience. To empathise with ideas the poet puts forward, to see an emotion in action, to feel. But it is difficult to understand if the poetry is inaccessible by being over-the-top abstract.
Is it a case of new poets responding to a strong impulse to disguise what they’re saying. Do they think it is only poetry if it is obscure and difficult to decipher? It is not uncommon to see young poets, unconsciously, do something at the beginning of their poems that demonstrates, according to whatever terms they have, that they’re poets. It’s as if they’re presenting their poetic qualifications for inspection. Some of them, for instance, will do something bizarre or outright confounding and disruptive with syntax. Others will throw in a bunch of conflicting and mixed images and metaphors before the reader even knows what the poem is about. Whilst this all makes sense to the poet – one would hope! – the reader does not reside inside the mind of the author.
There is often a reluctance to give basic information — what is going on (action), where we are ( location), context, who is speaking (character, voice) and so forth — as if to do so would be to ruin whatever is poetic about the poem.
Any thing that is difficult to say is ideally best said in a clear and concise voice with grounded imagery and metaphor.
One of the great pleasures of reading poetry is to feel words mean what they usually do in everyday life, and they begin to start to move into a more charged, activated realm. In poetry our familiar language can start to feel resonant with significance, more alive, even noble. It provides the AHA! moment for the reader. It is how these words are strung together that generates the magic and makes great poetry; thereby making it accessible to the reader. The words we use in our everyday lives carry with them deep reservoirs of history (personal and collective) that can, through a poem, be activated in the reader. Wildly abstract poems do not achieve this same level of connection and emotive response.
