19 nov 2010

Why do I like the plain style in scholarly writing and the trobar clus in poetry? That's a question I've been asking myself recently.

I do like the other poetic styles, the clarity of Williams, Koch, and Creeley and of the medieval / renaissance cancionero, so in the first place the opposition is not hard and fast. I also am fond of some baroque prose styles.

Yet still I maintain the separation between a certain "plainness" in my own writing and some of the difficult poetry I like. I don't view this as a contradiction but as a complement. There's no point in explaining something difficult in a difficult way: that just adds another layer of complexity.

2 comentarios:

Vance Maverick dijo...

Here's guessing that you don't mind difficult prose styles either -- for other applications. (Well, I suppose Urne Buriall is a sort of scholarly writing, but not a model much emulated these days.)

Thomas dijo...

Clarity is to philosophy as intensity is to poetry. That's your answer.