Ah yes, a good question, who are we trying to provoke?
Can we answer, simply, that poetry is talking to anyone who’ll listen? Of course, there will always be layers of understanding. Poetry has a long tradition and knowing something of it will likely deepen a reader’s engagement. There may be allusions; poems might be having conversations that many, even avid, readers will miss. But we have to imagine, when we write, even with a certain didacticism, that we are writing for people, all of them; why not. This is not to indulge a delusion that everyone is reading poetry; we’re often reminded that they’re not. When we advocate poetry because we think it’s a good and noble thing, we should know who is coming into contact with it, and what their experience is like, but we shouldn’t obsess over it. If we write out of a depression over who is reading, what good does that do us? We have to write with the widest possible empathy, don’t we? And all writing which truly reaches for something is a provocation: to see more clearly, to understand in a different way, to feel…I realise that, once again, I am writing as if to rectify assertions you have not, in fact, made. I’m interested in how poets think of their ‘audience’. Do you have a definite sense of people in mind when you write?
The new conversation we’re really pleased to welcome to the site, between Brandon Krieg & T Zachary Cotler, is germane with reference to such questions. The first two poems are, I think, powerful, finely-made pieces which embrace complexity without obfuscation. They reach across time to first causes with seriousness and delight. Any poem which rhymes ‘Derrida’ and ‘esoterica’ is going to take some reading; but it is inclusive in the broader sense of letting as much life as possible into its scope.
I’ll leave it to them to continue with that investigation. And to you to make some more sense of all of this, as ever.
CK