I don't disagree Nabila ..but just how is that premise demonstrated?.

i.e. Give us an example of both as you see and understand them

Gus

Poetry can be as diverse as the writers...
We all have our likes and dislikes, and what moves us and what doesn't. I don't believe that simplicity means that the author isn't trying or that poetry that baffles is particularly always profound. Some people write for the page while others write for performance. Some people care about tenses, verbs, and adjectives while others only care about the overall message, emotion and impact.

I believe in having an open mind and an open heart : )

That is a very odd question. Simplicity in poetry is highly revered in many cultures because a few 'simple' words can expose/elicit an underground depth of great wisdom.

I would like to better understand what you personally mean by 'simple'.

I would agree with what Francine says on this. I don't think you can generalise about poetry Nabila - there are so many different styles and within those styles, levels of competancy/talent.
There will be poets who write simple poetry that is brilliant in its economy, saying so much with few words. There will also be poets who write simple poetry that is just that - a few lines that purports to be more and really isn't. Where a poem lies on that scale is down to the reader and the audience; I guess one man's meat is another man's poison.
Whilst I can appreciate simple poetry - I like a poet that can show me a bit more - I like metaphors and rich imagery and to read a poem that has been sweated and grafted over. That being said - I like it to be fathomable - if it becomes too deep or surreal, I lose steam.
I have used the word 'I' a lot cos poetry is so personal and my taste is not yours. I do notice on this site though, that often simple poems attract much more attention and feedback than more traditional, highly crafted ones...

From the great variety of poetry that is posted on this site - and the variety of response, it is evident that there a wealth of differing tastes, both of writers and their audience. It seems impossible to generalise, or indeed categorise what is simple and what is profound. I have seen profound messages and themes in very simple and short poems and, conversely, the simple in longer and more "difficult" work.
I think poets need to ask themselves who exactly is their potential readership/audience and what do they want that audience to take from their work. Unless you are writing purely for your own benefit it seems to me to be essential that you take a step back from your own writing and survey it with the detachment of a reader. What do you want to say? What effect are you trying to acheive? How would you feel if you were unfamiliar with the poem? Yes, we all have egos and see our poems like children setting off into the big wide world - but where exactly are we hoping they will go?
Both profound and simple poetry has its place. To sit for hours struggling with rich vocabulary and apposite metaphor is no more worthy than the instant jotting of a simple pared down observation. What counts is quality - one does not cancel out the other.

Regards,
A.E.

I think that this is an interesting point and one I have considered a few times. Personally I find that I will write both types and can pull two diametrically opposite examples that demonstrate just how both can be liked.

However, when I review poetry for whatever purpose it may be, I always look at the reader who may not have been exposed to poetry for years. The reader that for a while I used to call 'the (wo)man on the streets'. One particular example would be Natalie Williams who is a fantastic poet and has recently released her second collection. Both are wonderful collections full of dramatic imagery and wonderful metaphors. However, despite my own opinions on the poetry if I were to pass the books onto a member of my family (which I have done a few times and find a useful yardstick) they wouldn't get past the third or forth poem before giving up.

I think that one must consider the audience when presenting poetry. Regardless of whether it is spoken or written. I have found that a good balance of both plain, 'simple' poetry, mixed sparingly with more metaphorical and image packed poetry works well. I believe that the truth is that as with TV, or books in our current social stage people don't want to have to work to get something. They want it plain and simple. Of course that is a generalisation and there are examples where the opposite is true but they are often far rarer......as for example Eastenders Vs. Lost.........Tale of Two Cities Vs. Da Vinci Code.....I could go on. Suffice to say I believe there is a balance, I can't define it with any great certainty though.

I am not having a pop at your poetry Nabila - I have alway rated it and shown so by the comments I have left. Your poetry is subtle and very well crafted whether you classify it as 'simple' or not.
I would agree totally with Anthony - he said more eloquently what I was thinking. I am not sure I understand this 'attitude' of people in the poetry world remark - sorry but that does seem to me a generalisation - you would have to tell me who thinks it since everyone contributing to this discussion so far is very open minded about the poetry they read.
Yes, I agree that all poetry is crafted whether it is stuffed full of imagery or not. I was just making the point that sometimes poems which are real diamonds and have been so worked upon, seem to go largely unnoticed and unappreciated. I am not talking about my own poetry when I make that comment Nabila - just the work of some others (who I am not related to either). I think it is a shame if our life has evolved so much we don't have time to appreciate a breadth of poetry - some of which is has a more classical style.

I know hun :-) emailed you

I am certainly not rejecting any style of poetry, it is about the attitudes projected by quote 'more well crafted' poets' who are so self deluded and narrow minded that they do not appreciate any other modern, contemporary, accessible style of poetry....oh why did I start this - more stress, I'll just go and write a poem !


may be I shall write a well crafted one :-)

OK, i'm going to pitch in with my little pieces of gravel and grains of soft sand. ( metaphor?) does it matter?

My understanding of what's been said so far in this thread is written in the first two lines.
Does it read or ''sound'' better than OK, now i'll have my say!!

Simplicity is to me a way of portraying a story in a poetic, rhythmic style for easy understanding for the listener or reader. In my own personal view it is perfect for performance purposes. It can also produce a range of emotions as well as 'profound words of wisdom.'
I'm often delighted by comments received along those lines for my own efforts. Often even i as the writer haven't actually realized there was so much packed into it.
Perhaps that is my inexperience as a writer but personally i feel all readers will take from and relate to anything they read which has an effect on them. Sometimes a very different effect from that which the writer intended. It doesn't mean the poet has failed to produce what they started out to do.
It simply means that others will see it differently.
That is the beauty of poetry for me.

I love to delve into those who prefer to ''write for the page''
and so include lots of metaphor. I often comment on how it makes me feel and the imagery it has produced for me but i do hope the poet will not be offended if it isn't what they wanted the reader to see or interpret.
That for me is the beauty of metaphor in poetry and the individuality of humans and the writer should be proud that their efforts have been noticed and affected someone in some way whether it be emotionally or thought provoking.

I'm still experimenting with styles and the majority of my poems are simplistic. One day i will aspire to write including more metaphor but right now i just want to write and write and write.

Nabila, you have so much talent with such fineness of thought, don't worry about other people. Do your own thing.

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:-)

I'm going to throw a spanner amongst the pigeons (or a cat in the works) here:
Simplicity such as facillitates (complete) comprehension can be useful, but it is not an essential element in presenting either engagment or the progression of an emotional process to the audience.

In my opinion the reader or listener is engaged by the "writer's voice" in which a piece is written. If the character of the writer's voice is that of a minimalist or an idiot savant that asks the sort of questions that everybody else sweeps under the carpet then simple is a good way forward.

For the emotional process, simplicity is a tricky thing because none of us get paid enough in this poetry lark to merit giving away our biographical details and telling all and sundry about our personal problems in a way that is easily discerned. I think simplicity works in this regard if you are bringing to the audience's attention things that they just don't see/notice happening around them on a daily basis, that by rights should provoke an emotional response. It is possible to be oblique/complex and still use language (in combination with well chosen prosody) to create a cameo of a progression of feelings in the audience and not have them fully understand why.

Hmmm... an interesting discussion to pitch headfirst into but here I go!

Simplicity vs Complication or Intricacy? I have no idea which I go for as a Poet or in a Poem. I would guess that it's horses for courses. Sometimes I want to go straight for the punch and so simple uncluttered writing is the best for that I guess... Other times I might want to explore an emotion or feeling or specific moment then I might have to use metaphor on metaphor (I'm not sure that I do tho... I'm not sure that I'm clever enough but I like it when others do and would like to emulate them).

I do tend to go for the funny as well, that kind of doesn't lie well with intricate.

I would like you to turn left.

Is a simple instruction.

I would like you to turn left, right?

Is also a simple instruction, but sounds complexed.

Poetry is no less open to being misunderstood or interpreted by the reader or listener any which way because at base it is a form of communication, no more and no less.

Firstly, there isn't a dichotomy between simple and profound. Poems don't have to be complicated, full of imagery and metaphor etc etc to be profound.

But the other side of simple is "simplistic": which is where the poet is essentially stating the bleeding obvious, assuming that his/her audience can't cope with a little nuance and need everything spelled out in black & white, and in anycase the poet probably has little or nothing new to say anyway. Poems of the "Drugs Are Bad" type, for instance.

Secondly, I don't see what's wrong with "baffling" your audience; if in the end what you're trying to do is to change peoples' way of seeing things. I remember the first time I read The Lovesong of J. Arthur Prufrock by TS Eliot: I didn't understand a word, but I felt that here was something that sounded really important and new; even now it does that.

I think if you're looking for nice, clear messages then you should probably be reading political or religious tracts not poetry. If you want words that stimulate the imagination, however "simple" or "complicated" the words are, then poetry is for you.

I think this is an important subject Nabila.
Why use two words where one will do?
In music, a rest (silence) can be equally as eloquent as a note.
And so with poetry; an uncluttered space where one might otherwise expect a word can sometimes allow an idea to develop...?

Simplicity is actually a very difficult thing to achieve in poetry, that is, if you want your poetry to be actually original; rather than parrotting the recieved opinions of either the media or a previous age.

It takes real concentration and discipline to produce a poem that is both simple and profound. Poetry is a way of seeing the world; and at its best it rinses the vision clean.

I don't think many poets achieve it. RS Thomas sometimes did; William Carlos Williams could. Even Ted Hughes sometimes ("Full Moon & Little Frieda" and some of the Poems from Elmet.)

Does poetry have to be profound so long as it touches us in some way?
One of the simplest poems I've read on here is Born in 85 by Emily Josephine McPhillips (no relation). It was very simple with a very basic message but it worked for me and a few others. It is impossible to pigeon hole poetry - it's horses for courses - as I've said in another discussion thread.

That depends with what you want to do with your poetry. Personally, I am uneasy with "sentiment" as I suspect it of being rather dishonest. That doesn't mean that I'm against feeling in poetry, just that a simplistic appeal to emotions is also what politicians and preachers and snake-oil salesmen are apt to do. I think poetry as a whole should aspire to greater things: to connecting with that difficult concept called "truth".

That doesn't mean I think that people should stop writing love poems, or poems to dead pets for that matter. But if you want to aspire to something more than sentiment, then thought is required. Of course, the English especially think they're above such vulgar things as thought....

To take just one example: landscape is today thought of as beautiful. But this wasn't always so, and has only been so since the Romantics. Why is that? Might make for some interesting poetry if you took that into consideration.

And whose 'truth' would that be Steven? Truth might also be a very subjective concept. How very different we are - poetry about landscapes does nothing for me - only if it is a back drop to emotions. I also can't understand why you should mistrust/dislike emotional poetry - emotions run throughout all of Shakespeare's work - they are what raise us above plant and animal life. And do you have to trust the emotion in a poem to appreciate it?
I do respect your opinions though - we are all so different and often a product of our experiences - we shouldn't expect others share our own views.

I don't distrust emotional poetry as such, Isobel. Just cheap emotion - of which there is narry a jot in Shakespeare, by the way; and his plays and poetry are never just emotional, they're steeped in learning, in intellectual enquiry as well as feeling.

As for "truth" - a difficult concept, I'm sure, which is why I didn't define it. "Truth" is something more than a slogan, though, or a Daily Mail editorial, or, for that matter, a Morning Star editorial. And it may just be your truth, rather than my truth. But poetry is about helping us to see clearer, isn't it?

Maybe - but you are confounding me Steven! LOL Whether an emotion is cheap or not is also very subjective. Perhaps what you object to is overly sentimental love poetry and I can understand that. It is very hard to write about love without erring on the mushy side - I've written a couple of those for weddings and am always aware of that tight rope act which is why I guess many people choose to ignore the subject - it is also very 'uncool'. Where am I going with this? I'm not quite sure.... Time to shut up me thinks.

Isobel - interesting discussion.

I think my definition of "cheap emotion" extends rather further than "mushiness." It extends to things like special pleading, where someone is writing to merely evoke pity for - say - a disabled child, or a wounded animal, or a particular group of people. Even if I agree with the idea (for instance, I think personally that refugees should be accepted unless there's strong evidence of a con, not as at present, where they have to go through exceedingly long-winded and complicated hoops to be accepted) I would never write a "pity the poor refugee" poem.

It's something to do with not wanting to manipulate peoples' emotions. So much of the media (politicians' speeches, advertising, street preachers, whatever) is about manipulation, and I don't want to add to it. With the BNP, for instance, appealing to atavistic feelings about "Englishness", I think poets should resist that kind of manipulation. They should look deeper, look behind the appeals to emotion, examine the meaning of the words.

That's why I think poetry is about truth, qualified as it might be, uncertain and fragmented as it may be, and why I think that poets have to think as well as feel. Not that we shouldn't feel; but we should also think about what those feelings mean. I know there's a tendency especially among the English to despise too much intellectualism, which is why people thing Betjemen is better than Bunting, but nevertheless, even Betjemen was not just emotive.

Of course, this isn't for every poem or every situation. A poem for a wedding is probably allowed a little mushiness.

Thanks for that endorsement Steven - so lovely to find common ground. Actually - one wedding 'love' poem which I still think to this day is rather lovely - got rejected for its 'mushiness'. The second had to be adjusted cos everyone said that its underlying message was too sad to be read out at a wedding... The balance is very hard to achieve - one man's meat or experience of truth can be very different to anothers...
I haven't to my knowledge read any BNP poems or many about refugees. I guess you are right to say that emotional language can be manipulated for political ends - thankfully not too much on this site.
Have enjoyed discussing this with you.
Isobel x

Okay so here's another interesting angle on the simplicity arguement. Stenography. For those not aware it is a form of cryptography, you hide one message inside another.

I was at one point involved in a website that taught people about various code making and breaking techniques. One interesting type of code that we discussed was poetry, or rather poetic forms. You see because of, for example, a 'traditional' sonnet's fixed pattern it is rather easy to use one to hide a message within it's form. You would then use a cipher to work out the message. In our example we used the 3rd, 7th and 1st syllables in from the 4th, 8th and 2nd lines in that order.

I suppose really this has nowt to do with poetry but I just had the thought: 'It doesn't matter how simple a piece of writing looks or sounds. There can still be more than meets the eye!'

Poetry, more often than not, involves the compression of language. However, as less words are used, the connotations of those words become apparently more numerous, taking the reader along various sematic pathways. A good example of this would be the shorter works of William Blake. Less can be more.