25 January 2011

Riddles, Readers and the Unpopularity of Poetry

We’re writing riddles at the moment at my children’s Poetry Club. We’ve read some riddles together, and attempted to solve them, and the children have got a lot of pleasure out of ‘getting it’, particularly when they ‘got it’ faster than I did.

Riddles have been a sub-genre of poetry since poetry started being written down and presumably for centuries before that. The Exeter Book is a C10th codex of Anglo-Saxon poetry, and among the works contained within it are nearly a hundred riddles. Riddling seems to have been more than just a pastime for the Anglo-Saxons, however. It seems to have, at least in the works that we are left with, been indicative of the way they liked thinking. In Old English there are at least eighteen different words to describe aspects of thought: a fact which seems to indicate that the Anglo-Saxons valued and gained pleasure from cognitive effort.
The Exeter Riddle Statue, in the centre of Exeter, is by Michael Fairfax,
and features eight of the Exeter Book Riddles... with solutions for those who
can work out where to find them.

The kenning, for example, the compound noun which is characteristic of Anglo-Saxon as well as Norse poetry, could be considered a micro-riddle in its own right. Take the kenning ‘whale-road’ (from Beowulf). This is not an obvious or direct description of the sea. It is created in the same way that riddles are – by circumlocution, by describing something in a way that makes the reader look at it as something else. It requires some cognitive effort to decode, as it brings together two semantic domains, and requires the reader to make connections which then yield meaning. But yielding the meaning isn’t the only point – what’s also crucial is that, having worked out that ‘whale road’ is referring to the sea, the reader (or listener) will now have a whole new  way of experiencing the concept that is the sea. Wait! I hear you cry – you’re talking about common or garden metaphor, here, aren’t you? Well, yes.

Using a workshop idea from The Poetry Book for Primary Schools (Wilson & Hughes, The Poetry Society, 1998), I got the children to look really closely at an apple. I then asked them to tell me something about the apple, something that described it but used words as if they were describing something else. They came up with some great descriptions: perfectly designed to mislead a reader, but at the same time, extremely accurately observed. They loved the trickery of it all, the way they were disguising the apple with words, the way they were making the reader expend effort on their creation.

Riddles are very valuable when trying to get children to write poetry. Because riddles force the writer to make their readers do some work, the writer has to look at the object of the riddle in an entirely fresh way, in other words, defamiliarise it. But in riddles, this defamiliarisation needs to follow certain rules – the descriptions have got to seem strange, but be logical when ‘solved’. It’s all about holding two ideas about something in your head at the same time: our apple became a person wearing a pointy hat, with a freckled face, and flesh that wept when pierced by sharp white knives. Metaphors galore – and the children didn’t even realise they were creating them.

All this riddling fun set me thinking, though. Riddles are very much a sub-genre of poetry, and, within a contemporary context, a very distinct one. Unlike most poetry, riddles are about one thing. They can be solved. The cognitive effort expended is rewarded by measurable success. A nice mental tick. ü That’s not the case with other poetry: but there are many readers who don’t like poetry just because of this. These are the readers who think that all poetry is a kind of riddle: there is a ‘hidden meaning’ that the poet has wrapped in wordy flim-flam, and all they have to do is peel off and dissect the outer coverings to find what it really means. These are the people who are made uneasy by the fact that a poem doesn’t have to mean anything, it just is. It’s just there for the reader to make their own meaning. Basically, we poets make them make all this cognitive effort and then won’t tell them whether they’re right or wrong because, basically, we can’t. And if we could, we wouldn’t want to.

My sister, who’s a maths teacher, is made really uncomfortable by not being told what to think about a poem. An acquaintance who loves crosswords feels he is being cheated if a poem’s deliberate ambiguities will not allow him to settle on an interpretation. He reads a lot of poetry, really wants to love it, but finds himself frustrated when he can’t pin down what the writer intended. He’s not happy that the poet’s intent might have been to make him decide.

Ask a poet what it means and you’ll get short shrift. You might get a bit of background, or an admission that they are addressing a certain theme, but you’re unlikely to get anything more specific. There is an anecdote which tells how Robert Browning was once asked the meaning of one of his more’ difficult’ poems. ‘Madam,' he is said to have replied, ‘When I wrote that, only God and I knew what it meant. Now only God knows.’ And T.S. Eliot said ‘What a poem means is as much what it means to others as what it means to the author’. I’ve heard that Carol Ann Duffy, when visiting schools, refuses point-blank to answer questions about what a poem means. And I think all three of them are right.


But, I wonder – as poets, poets who presumably would like more people to enjoy poetry, do we need to think a bit more about this? Are these readers wrong? Are they just not ‘sophisticated’ enough? Or are we being too demanding? I wouldn’t want to write poems where the ‘meaning’ is hung out like washing on a line, because what I value in poems I read is the way that I am a co-constructor of meaning, the way that a poem doesn’t think I’m thick, leaves me space to make up my own mind. I don’t want my poems to be solved like a riddle, and then discarded from the mind. But – and it’s a big but – I want more people to enjoy reading poetry as much as I do. I also want them to buy my book.

Theories of literariness place cognitive effort and schema refreshment high in their characterising factors. Riddles might be seen to fulfil those criteria. But in addition, polysemy, ambiguity, space for each reader to inhabit a poem and own it for him or herself are also vital.

I think it would be fair to say that the majority of people don't read contemporary poetry. And presumably that’s because they don’t enjoy it. And a lot of them don’t enjoy it because they don’t understand it. And they don’t understand it because they can’t work out what it means. And that’s because they’re not really meant to – at least, not in the sense that they expect.

So maybe we need to get people to move on from thinking of poetry as a glorified riddle. We need them to value their own contribution to the writer-text-reader relationship. But how we’re going to do that, I don’t know. Any ideas?

6 comments:

  1. Wow, Sally you are tackling a big subject here and one that I have thought a lot about in recent years. I am surrounded by intelligent, erudite people - all well read - and yet I find many of them raising their eyes to heaven when poetry is mentioned. Particularly contemporary poetry. And it makes me feel sad because I so want them to enjoy it as much as I do.

    And yet I have to admit that even I, when faced with some poetry these days, am totally turned off by complete obscurity. Surely poetry has to connect in some way with the reader otherwise what do we write it for? If a reader has to work so hard to make any sense of it then I can understand why they might switch off and turn to something else. It needs to stretch the imagination, make people see things through fresh eyes, give totally different perspectives on things, and have that wow factor that touches a chord somewhere. If it doesn't do any of those things then surely it has failed in its objective - if it has one.

    Maybe I am not making sense here but I do feel very sorry when I see the poetry shelves in bookshops half empty and when I mention a poet's name (say Billy Collins) none of the assistants have ever heard of him.

    The worst thing is when I get the feeling that people feel nervous of me because I write poetry - as if they are saying "there she goes, the mad poet". Or they humour me - which I find really infuriating.

    All I know is that I shall continue to promote poetry everywhere I can - especially amongst children because they are naturals, which means that we were all naturals once. So it's really important to harness all that before sensitivities become dulled in this fast moving technological world.

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  2. Thanks for your really thoughtful comments. I know what you mean about the eye-rolling and the 'humouring': it's as if the word 'poetry' always has an invisible 'pretentious' stuck in front of it.

    And about deliberate obscurity in writing: I don't think that helps the cause. But where does the line lie? I wonder whether one reader's deliberate obscurity is another's 'cognitive demand worth the effort'? In other words, you and I might think our poems are perfectly clear, inviting the reader in to share in their own way some experience or epiphany or idea, but 95% of our potential readers mightn't be able to make sense of them at all...

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  3. In poetic terms, Sally, what you are seeking is the answer to the equivalent of Douglas Adams’ ‘ultimate question', which will always remain undefined; it probably has something to do with asking why some people feel a need to seek entertainment from the way words can change their meaning to suit context, tone of voice, syntax and, not least, the frame of mind of the recipient. Words can be comforting, frightening, inspirational, evocative… …
    Poetry was very popular until the beginning of the 20th C when the modernists started to create riddles of increasing complexity, to the point when even they could not solve their own. It’s the arty-farty ideal that the meaning of any art work is exclusive to the observer. Such exclusivity can only be enjoyed in isolation, and therefore it cannot be popular. In the OU’s ‘Big Red Book’ (p215), Bill Herbert says ‘Some amateur poets just leave us with the thought, and fail to engage us on the level of the image. And plenty of professionals dazzle with imagery, but forget to align this to the message of the poem.’ Yes, Bill, above all the message should be clear.
    Since I have been studying literature seriously, I have come round to the belief that poetry should be entertaining to everyone who is prepared to take the time to listen to the words and think about them. Any riddles that are built in should be amusing rather than challenging. Of course the poet needs to create images, and it may not be immediately apparent how various images connect or are constructed in layers, but the conclusion should be clear. Rolfe Harris had it right when his TV daubings were half-formed and he would ask ‘can you tell what it is yet?’ But by the end, all his images came together in a way that captured the imagination of the majority of his audience. He applies the same basic skills in his oil paintings which now sell for £thousands; a series of detailed images which combine to create a delightful result. If all poems were built that way, poetry would be more popular.
    Most poets sell most of their poetry to other poets. That’s because practiced poets are the only ones who can appreciate and understand the finer points – and sometimes the whole point – of most poems. Publishers and the learned people who preside over competitions seem to be afraid of taking entertainment value into account alongside technical and creative skills. I think Simon Armitage was right to include ‘The Acid Test’ (The X-factor) as the ultimate procedure in his Poetry Testing Kit (http://www.poetrybooks.co.uk/poetry_portal/simon_armitage_s_tips_for_poetry ) because that is the final measure of whether a poem has the potential to be popular.
    What is really needed is a school curriculum that recognises that poetry will only be more popular if it uses popular poems in the teaching of poetry. Let’s exchange the attitude that says ‘if you find this boring you must be thick’ to one of ‘come and enjoy the artistry in this understandable, popular poem.

    Peter

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  4. I’ve just been re-reading Ruth Padel’s ‘52 Ways of Looking at a Poem’ - the introduction is the best intro to modern poetry I’ve read anywhere. She makes some interesting points about the unpopularity of poetry, and its status now.

    She points out that in the 19th century, a new long poem or collection by, say, Tennyson was a big event that everyone would talk about - rather like, perhaps, a novel by Ian McEwan or Nick Hornby now. But poetry was of course quite different in conception then - it boomed and beat its chest, and didn’t in general attempt to be retiring, ambiguous, or obscure. The change of course began with the modernism of the early 20th century - a change which people used to the old way found hard to understand.

    And her other interesting comment was that even highly educated people she knew tended to shy away from poetry. She gave the example of a lawyer, who said that he labours away all day in front of complex passages of writing, and that if he’s going to read in the evening he wants it to be something that will sweep him away effortlessly, not something he has to work at.

    But I think this guy might be surprised if he gave it a try. After all, people who work all week often enjoy themselves by doing something strenuous at the weekends - cycling, perhaps. I’m much too physically lazy to spend my weekends pushing pedals to get around. But I’m quite happy with poetry as the mental equivalent. That takes effort too, but you’re rewarded by new scenery and unexpected sights - and can feel just as refreshed as a result. Perhaps that’s one way of getting the pleasures of poetry across to people.

    Chris

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  5. Hi Sally, lovely to see your riddles post, and thank you for mentioning The Poetry Book For Primary Schools. will stick a link to your page on my blog, with best wishes
    Anthony Wilson
    www.anthonywilson.posterous.com

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  6. Excellent post, Sally. Thanks.

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