It's not about hard and easy. Ashbery is medium soft now; he used to be rock hard. Reverdy is transparent, yet he was not always so. Cummings used to be incomprehensbile but now he's far too comprehensible. It's as much an oversimplification to say that all greaet poetry stems from "trobar clus" as to say the opposite. Garcilaso was held up as model of limpidity but in his day was seen as obscure purveyor of Italianate modes. Grenier is "easy." Silliman is clearer than Ashbery. Guest is transparent in style yet "intellectually challenging," to use my unfortunate euphemism. Armantrout is easy of approach yet complex. Of the poets I study in my book, many are quite "easy" yet extremely difficult at the same time. A lot has to do with the viewpoint of the reader, and how these metaphors are deployed. Transparency vs. opacity. Ease vs. difficulty. Clarity vs. confusion. Softness vs. obduracy. Approachability vs. aloofness. Depending on what metaphor you choose you might get different results. I wish I could write academically like I do on the blog.