Hedningarna

Mama Keita

I have no idea who these people are or what their nationality might be, but the music is fabulous.

Fuego (Bomba Estéreo)

Wayeina (Oumou Sangare)

Rewend (Aynur Doğan)

My Big Fat World Music Fetish: Lalitades

"Naretze"



"By Looking at Two Black Eyes"

Djúpavík (Elsa Lefebvre, a.rawlings, Philip V. & Freyja the dog)

Does sound carry meaning in the absence of language? What is "meaning"? Does it even matter? How should we react when confronted with a performance like the one documented in the video above? Does a question that begins with "how should" have anything to do with it?

My own impressions are pretty simple: I enjoy this stuff but I can't say for certain why. As a poet, I'm always conscious of the sound words make through their syntactical interactions, but I've never worked with sound as a pure material that doesn't rely on language.

In the latest edition of Jacket2, a. rawlings asks some questions of her own, and they're quite a bit different:

Are there women who self-identify as sound poets? Who are the female practitioners of sound poetry? Where do female practitioners using this term live? Why don’t more women utilize this term? Why is the term so popular with male practitioners? Is work by women, or the rare mention of their work, a tokenist gesture so the field doesn’t seem quite so androcentric? Is there a reason why the term “sound poetry” is not an accessible, acceptable, comfortable, reasonable term for female practitioners? Is the term overly masculine somehow?

Is “sound poetry” an overly North American or English-language category? How does an English-language, Canadian and/or American sound poetry differ from klankpoëzie, klangpoesie, poesie sonore, lettrisme, parole in liberta, zaum, lautgedichte …? How do we navigate the definitional differences between North American-style “sound poetry,” twentieth-century “sound poetry,” and a more general category that attempts to include historic, ethnopoetic, and pan-cultural works using elements of sound and language?

What do we mean when we use the term “sound poetry”?

To be honest, I was surprised. I'd never considered sound poetry to be a gender-specific practice, nor had I though of it as referring specifically to English-speaking poets. Instead, I'm led to wonder about terms like meaning, or to think about the meanings we receive from non-verbal human vocalizations. Do they run deeper than "mere" affect? And what does a term like affect really mean to a human subject that uses language as a foundation for thought?

Over the next few months, Jacket2 has invited rawlings to conduct a series of conversations with a number of "North American and European poets whose work and interests often explore the materiality of language." These include Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl, Cris Costa, Maja Jantar, Oana Avasilichioaei, Leevi Lehto, Carmel Purkis, Jaap Blonk, Gary Barwin, Caroline Bergvall and Rozalie Hirs.

It should be a fascinating series and I can't wait to see what develops.

Update: Here's a link to the first installment--Sound I polypoetry: Maja Jantar in conversation with Oana Avasilichioaei

A perfect bedlam

About. About me. About something.
About the gas lamps. A cabman.

A cold gloomy. Across the road. Afterwards.
Against. A gloomy evening.

All day. All night. All over.
All soaked with rain. All the sciences.

All this month. All up. Almost menacing.
Almost suddenly. And.

And a comfortable arm-chair. And all the problems. And almost ceased.
And answered. And a sort of stream.

And began thinking. And began watching. And beginning.
And between them. And called me.

And crossing themselves. And do you know. And forget them.
And go as they will. And had been spending.

And have been going. And he had. And he too.
And how many. And I do not know it.

And if it had happened. And I have known it. And I know that.
And I let them come. And I recall them now.

And I remember. And I remember that. And it amused them.
And it had been. And it is just now.

And it was after that. And it was still. And just.
And kept crying. And lay trembling.

And loathed it. And make evident. And no doubt.
And not so much. And only.

And playing stones. And poor. And poor as I was.
And put it down. And rushed headlong.

And she. And shouted. And shuddering.
And so. And so.

And that. And there was. And there was scarcely.
And the youngest child. And two other friends.

And was followed. And went on. And what I resented.
And why. And would not.

An idea. An unmistakable. Any.
Anyone. Anything at all.

Appeared there. A retired curtain. As it was.
As I was looking. As I was thinking.

As much to them. As one could. As old as old.
A splendid revolver. As ridiculous.

A stare. As though. A table with books.
At eleven o'clock. At first I fancied.

At her. A thin little. A thought.
At me. At me.

At seeming ridiculous. At the sky. At the table.
At the table. At the table.

At the university. A whole candle. Became cooler.
Because she was shivering. Because that stare.

Before me. Between ten and eleven. Black patches.
Both she and her children. But afterwards.

But a wretched little dress. But clasping. But how much longer.
But I gave up. But I never care.

But I noticed. But not. But now.
But of the good. But one could.

But she ran. But she was. But since I grew.
But strange to say. But suddenly abandoned.

But that. But that it had only seemed. But the full realisation.
But they did not. But they laughed.

But they won't understand. But through affection. But twelve months.
But was. By a horrible.

By day. By that time. By the elbow.
By the elbow. By the hair.

Came last year. Caring about anything. Certainly be.
Colder and damper. Covered.

Crying out. Dampness. Dear to me.
Determined to do so. Did not.

Dinner that day. Disappeared. Distinctly seen.
Doing nothing. Don't even think.

Down. Drinking vodka. Each other.
Engaged in dragging. Even in.

Even physically. Even when they laugh at me. Every instant since.
Every night. Everyone always laughed.

Every year. Evidently. Existed only to prove.
Existing. Facing her.

Fathomless. Flew from me to him. For.
For a long time. For certain.

For instance. For some unknown reason. For that little girl.
For the last three days. For the last year.

For them. For the right moment. For twelve months.
From being lost. From every.

From every stone. From everything. From fright.
From the fear. From the first.

From the very beginning. Gave me a thought. Gentlemen of doubtful.
Given up thinking. Give way and confess.

Gloomier. Grew and strengthened. Had a sort of fit.
Had been falling. Had been put out.

Had been there also. Had existed in the past. Had given me.
Had passed. Had scarcely.

Half a dozen. Has been here. Has caused me.
Her hands. Her mother.

Her wet broken shoes. His behavior. How much they shout.
I am a ridiculous person. I am telling this.

I asked myself. I began to feel. I believe that.
I bored them. I bought.

I cannot tell. I could join in their laughter. I could see that.
I cut. I decided.

Identically. I did not. I did not go.
I didn't know. I do not resent it.

I don't remember. If all the street lamps. I fancy.
If at least. If I did not feel.

If it had not been. If it were not. If one looked.
I guessed that. I had.

I had almost. I had an impulse. I had firmly.
I had long had an inkling. I had solved.

I have. I have always been ridiculous. I have a room.
I have a sofa. I have of course tried.

I kept waiting. I knew. I knew I was ridiculous.
I know for a fact. I know that sound.

I learnt the truth. I made up my mind. I mounted up.
In abject terror. In a flat.

Indeed. Indifferent. Induced me to tell.
In every relation. In frightened children,

In her voice. In his cab. In me with the years.
In my armchair. In my early youth.

In old days. In one of these dark patches. In the distance.
In the end. In the future.

In their eyes as before. In the past. In there.
In the room. In the shape.

In the street. In the street. In the street I looked.
In thought. Into the lodgings.

Into them. Into the service. I only read.
I remember. I sat down.

I sat down quietly. I sat silent. I say 'unknown.'
Is burnt each night. I should go on sitting.

I should have blown out my brains. I should have shot myself. I sit up all night.
I sit up all night. I spoke without any.

I stamped my foot. I stay awake. Is that so.
I studied. I suddenly felt.

I suddenly said. It. It did not.
It did not matter. It had been going on.

It intently. It is. It lightened.
It stopped. I thought it would.

I thought that. I told her first. It to anyone.
I turned. It was. It was a child of eight.

It was myself. It was the same with life. It would have been.
I understood. I used.

I used to be miserable. I was born. I was going home.
I was seven years old. I was so proud.

I was so utterly. I went to school. Left on a visit.
Last November. Leave me.

Less cheerless. Lit the candle. Little by little I guessed.
Lived there. Lodger in the flat.

Lying in my drawer. Made a show. Made one's heart.
Mammy, Mammy. Mankind.

Mattered. Matter to me. Me.
Means despair. More deeply.

More fully. Most of all. My awful characteristic.
My friends, I said. My problems.

My room is small. Myself that night. Next to mine.
No annoyance. Nor how many.

Not exactly at myself. No they won't. Nothing mattered.
Not of reproach. Not seeming but being.

Now they call me. Now this stare. Of annoyance.
Of being. Of being angry.

Of it. Of the curtain. Of the curtain.
Of them there are. Of the partition.

Of the ridiculous figure. Oh how hard it is. Oh how I suffered.
Oh I had not settled. Old-fashioned shapes.

One man on earth. One of the gloomiest. One of them.
One of them knew. One other.

One way or the other. On her head. On it.
On like that. On the contrary.

On the third of November. Or guessed. Or that something of the sort.
Or whether there had never been. Other lodgers.

Out. Over it. Particularly.
Particularly. People in the prospect.

Perhaps from the hour. Perhaps from the time. Perhaps it was.
Possible evenings. Properly.

Pulling at me. Rain. Rain I can remember.
Really care. Regimental.

Reputation. Rousing and suddenly. Sad because they can not know.
Sadder because. Say a word.

Simply because. She called out. She had run.
She ran beside me. She suddenly pulled me.

She was in terror. She was not weeping. Shoot myself.
Shoot myself. Since they came.

Sir, Sir. Sobbing and gasping. So completely.
So far. Some passerby.

Sometimes stops. Some words. So sad as I hear them.
So that it seemed. Spasmodically.

Spite. Stoned. Studied at the university.
Suddenly. Suddenly I noticed.

Suddenly occurred. Tattered clouds. Than anybody else.
Than any other. Than the rain.

That. That curtain. That had come upon me.
That her mother. That I allowed myself.

That I came home. That I do not even hear. That I found out.
That if there were. That I might.

That I remain. That I should shoot. That is I shall.
That it should. That it was all the same.

That I was absurd. That I was ridiculous. That I was ridiculous.
That I was ridiculous. That many.

That night. That night. That note.
That nothing. That nothing in the world.

That something. That's why. That the curtain.
That theory. That there was nothing.

That there would be nothing. That they are. That very day.
That was. That was because.

That was growing. That would be. The evening.
The evening could not be. The landlady.

Them. The more I learned. The more thoroughly.
Then. The night before.

Then I left. The other side. There had been a fight.
There never had been anything. There was only.

There were. The same consciousness. The same evening.
The sky. The stares gave me.

The street. The thought I don't know. The truth.
The truth. The words I understood.

They are all dear to me now. They caught my eye. They did not know.
They got excited. They saw it.

They talked of something. They were not offended. They won't take him.
This little girl. This pride grew.

This showed itself. Though I realised. Though she did not articulate.
Through something. Through the partition.

Till daybreak. To anyone. To a policeman.
To avoid his acquaintance. To be precise.

To be seen. To be the only one. To call someone.
To confess. To drive her away.

To find something. To go. To help.
To kill myself. To knock against people.

To manhood. To me. To me.
To me. To me as I went.

To me that. To my fifth drink. To my school mates.
To notice them. Took me.

Took out the revolver. Too petrified. To them.
To the terrible misery. To think about.

To this day. Two chairs. Two lives before.
Two of them had been. Trifles.

Understand it. Up at the sky. Wall.
Wander through my mind. Wanted to complain.

Was bored. Was dying. Was empty.
Was going on. Was happening.

Was horribly. Was my own fault. Was rising.
Was sleeping. Was that.

Was the conviction. Wearing nothing. Were in mortal fear.
What had I. When I had put it down.

Whether the world existed. Where there are. Which.
Which could not utter. Which was of more consequence.

Who had been taken ill. Who knew better. Who knows the truth.
Why. Why it was.

With a garret window. With a kerchief. With all my sorrow.
With American leather. With an angle.

With complete conviction. With every year. With her.
With me. With old furniture.

With people. With science. With two little children.
Would have never. You can not care.

See, poetry REALLY IS dangerous ...

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Answer the question

Filtering the light through a system

I. What it will do

We are in danger of forgetting.
Analysis of the sound.
Driven away as violently as from our bodies.
We answered that we entirely agree.
The framework of poetics.
Into the text as into the world.
As of something limitless, unbounded.
A dominant that can be defined.
To strengthen by repeating.
The magic of illusion.
Its mandatory and inalienable constant.
The equivalent of destiny, to confuse.
Facing a self-inflicted death.
Not an invisible portion.

II. On the verge of being discovered

"We cannot fall out of this world."
An indispensable device.
La nouvelle de l'ancien.
Feeling of an indissoluble bond.
The role and structure of other components.
An arid millennial ground.
More certain than this feeling.
The art of a given epoch.
To foresee the unforeseeable.
To maintain clear and sharp lines.
Viewed as a particular.
Like music, our stream of phantasms.
Subject to disturbance.
Artistically focused.

III. A passionate and precise interrogation

From the beginning.
Criteria and its composition.
Extraordinarily rich and inventive.
The analogies might be too remote.
Proclaiming self-sufficiency.
Prolonged by a production of forms.
The more general problem of preservation.
Words in and for themselves.
Each stage of rapture inscribing.
A destruction of the memory-trace.
The referential function.
So full of luminous torrents.
Dovetailed into a jumble.
The exclusively aesthetic function.

IV. These waves, these floods, these outbursts

Things that are unimaginable.
Not unchangeable.
Kept in the dark about themselves.
Historical sequence in spatial terms.
The hierarchy.
The fantastic tumult of drives.
It has only one justification.
A more infinite relationship.
Resisting death.
In pictorial terms.
Precisely toward the sign.
Enough to take the edge off.
It bows to the objection.
A question of disappearance.

V. An oblate consideration

In no sense preserved.
Subsidiary and optional.
Once the eyes have shuttered.
A city is a priori.
The most artistic of all devises.
Intact unto themselves.
The thymus gland and childhood.
Monolithic, more synthetic.
In the trembling equilibrium.
Until it has attained form.
A scrutiny of transitional regions.
Confined to the narrow room.
To represent this phenomenon.
An instability of boundaries.

VI. The territory is black

For the past to be preserved.
Letters, diaries, notebooks, and travelogues.
We might fail.
This feeling of infantile helplessness.
Atonal complex of values.
Internalized as horror.
Which constitutes the ideational content.
Continual shifts in the system.
The infamous logic.
By withdrawing from the world.
Our alleged carelessness.
We see a physiological basis.
Our lovely mouths.
Their rhythms and their styles.

VII. Regression to the primordial

Our blood flows and we extend.
The non-canonical version.
Trances and ecstasies.
Not afraid of lacking.
Reinstated, rehabilitated and recognized.
The riddles of this world.
Omitted, brushed aside at the scene.
As erroneous and shabby.
Placated by our signs of remorse.
The opposition.
A name in the realist canon.
One would like to mix among their ranks.
Confounded with the history of reason.
And condemned.

VIII. To address ourselves without meaning

The privileged alibi.
Corresponding to our requirements.
An intoxicating substance.
For there have been failures.
Our liberation has promoted.
The idea of life having a purpose.
At odds with tradition.
Contemporaneous masters.
At loggerheads with the world.
Harrowing explosions.
The prevalent sound of this epoch.
Withdrawn from contracts.
A radical mutation of things.
Temporarily suppressed.

IX. From the external word we rage

Every structure is for a moment.
Important impulses toward overcoming.
The pressure of these possibilities.
That never hung their heads.
On chronological cross sections.
A suffering which comes from elsewhere.
Indispensable ruptures and transformations.
A visible awareness.
Recommended by the various schools.
Returning to the body.
To novelty as a deviation.
Put into practice by the uncanny stranger.
A determined refusal.
And other methods.

X. Access to our native strength

Of the contraband.
Against the sufferings which may come.
Which have been kept under seal.
Repeated attempts to shift.
A happiness which can be archived.
A place reserved for the guilty.
Episodic and anecdotal gestures.
An attack against nature.
Those who must urgently learn to speak.
Without elucidation.
To be intimately bound up.
Without a body, dumb and blind.
Obscured by questions.
To influence their own retentions.

XI. Entirely lost for words

Ground, sky and language.
Achievements of the concept.
Suffering from a sharp sensation.
Governed by the phallus.
The idea of mechanical agglomeration.
Intimately bound.
Phenomenal chains are not sufficient.
Those which speak in the masculine.
The easy liberation.
An existing norm.
The margin or the margin of margins.
So highly prized as a benefit.
Isolating the former from the latter.
Never simple or linear.

XII. Interdependence of the external

Its immanent laws.
Imperceptibly touched.
The satisfaction of a controlled impulse.
To explain the tempo.
A relationship to our voices.
In the case of inhibition.
An analysis of correction.
"She writes in white ink."
Of forbidden things.
Submitted to investigation.
A metaphor, necessary and sufficient.
The displacement of libido.
Methodologically fatal.
Curtailed no more than the relation.

XIII. In giving the fantasy body

A unique solution, the question.
What touches you.
The intensity is mild.
More productive than agreeing.
It arrives, vibrantly.
Special dispositions and gifts.
Problems of the crucial chasm.
Histories and intersections.
The furnishing procedure.
Clearer today than it was tomorrow.
Simultaneity in several places.
Development of the bleak sensation.
Primarily from the official voice print.
In thought, in every practice.

XIV. To carry out

Entitled to the leading position.
The staggering alteration.
Reality as the sole enemy.
Problems in the verbal structure.
An enticement machine.
Reality is too strong.
An integral part of linguistics.
Theorized, enclosed, coded.
Like a paranoic.
Into music, ballet, graphic art.
By peripheral figures.
Classed among the mass-delusions.
Transgressing the frame.
They hesitate to admit or deny.

XV. The path on which we first encountered

Between a world and the word of concerns.
A possibility or the pertinence of distinction.
Based on the value of love.
To sing out of key with logicians.
Undoing the work of death.
Under which things are felt as beautiful.
Based on a current but erroneous interjection.
Only from the living boundaries.
This aesthetic attitude.
A close correspondence, and much closer.
In a sequence of struggle and repulsion.
Nature and the origin of beauty.
An influence from the emblem.
Of theorized castration.

XVI. Attributes of the sexual object

As its focal point.
Not enclosed in a false theater.
A problem of hermeneutics.
Has remained vital or has been reviewed.
Each object located in ‘self.’
The nature of our talents.
Experienced by the present.
Manifest and insistent.
As a last technique of living.
Not to be confused with light.
A great shadow from the scepter.
The pleasurable yield.
Concerned only with wages.
The old pattern firmly anchored.

XVII. Into a mass-delusion

A series of successive descriptions.
Their desire for reality.
Of God's inscrutable decrees.
A system of connected subcodes.
If they fall apart on discovery.
We have been given an answer.
Protean, fluctuating phenomena.
“She's beautiful and she's laughing.”
The reacquisition that adjusts.
A brilliance of imprecision.
The two lobes differ slightly.
An attitude of changed definition.
The emphatic disavowal.
To be associated.

XVII. A piece of unconquerable death

A radical experiment in reduction.
Yet to be written.
We come upon a contention.
In all the variety of its functions.
Infinite and mobile hostility.
This strange attitude.
Factors of any speech event.
It is not about possibility.
Neurotic because we cannot tolerate.
The message requires destination.
Abrupt and gradual awakenings.
A return to context.
A different function of language.
Timorous and too soon.

XVIII. It is unnecessary to enumerate

An impression of emotion.
Blindly yielding.
Is not the only precondition.
Laid bare by interjections.
We invent the impregnable.
The voice of pessimistic creation.
From the standpoint of information.
Surrounded by a vascular plexis.
It is difficult and barren.
We cannot restrict the notion.
The very idea of pronouncing.
This method of looking at things.
An angry or ironic margin.
Stops short before the word.

XIX. A victim of inquisition

Phonemic and in the emotive.
Sweeping away syntax.
Describes the whole sum.
Mere variants of one and the same.
A force unleashed.
It has no hesitation.
As the animal reaches its form.
Flying in the face of language.
All activities and every resource.
The same elliptic sentence.
A language to crawl inside of.
A gigantic force for our disposal.
All such emotive cues.
To internalize or manipulate.

XX. In the photographic chaos

Not liable to a truth test.
Hidden worlds.
We can feel at great distances.
The imperative not to be challenged.
The agents of incidence.
A voice from an absent person.
Inferred from the triadic model.
After women and birds.
He first appeared as a feeble animal.
Composed of a central mass.
Jumbling the order of space.
Embodied in his gods.
To conjoin our continued attention.
A gesture that cuts.

XXI. A kind of prosthetic God

Dialogues of a minor import.
The differentiated puncture.
In this field of civilization.
Degenerating into tiny islands.
Volcanic, as it is written.
Cultivated and planted.
Where emotion is faithfully rendered.
In order to smash everything.
To repudiate the first demand.
Acquisition of a mother tongue.
An obstinate future.
Far from exhausting these demands.
The sole function of verbal art.
A taste of free air.

XXII. We are astonished to learn

Attempts to reduce the sphere.
A movement of moral indignation.
Tissues of the fragment.
Promoting signs of the palpable sign.
Adventures into anonymity.
Laid down once and for all.
Focused on the third person.
A whole composed of parts that are wholes.
Known as fractures.
Stress is always assumed.
Changing ensembles, a mechanized cheer.
Beauty, cleanliness, and order.
A sequence inside the equation.
Our anatomy.

XXIII. Demanded of us by the structure of hygiene

Delimited boundaries.
Inscribed by these words.
Ideas of a possible perfection.
Latent manifestations of the function.
Discerning contours.
The motive force of human relation.
Raised to law.
Ephemeral and passionate sojourns.
Broken in favor of the individual.
The same figure of meaning.
Passed into infinity.
This final outcome is compulsory.
Our primary essence.
Inactive because of transmutation.

XXIV. Justice demands that no one escape

Entirely within our competence.
The flying colors, leaves, and rivers.
The simple task of observing.
Superimposed upon the other functions.
Sand, coral, seaweed, tides.
We have been careful.
Effected by sections of the sequence.
Of any same, or any other.
Synonymous with perfection.
An indispensable occurrence.
Dragged into the chain of substitutions.
Which lead to a different moment.
The number of syllables in an upbeat.
That still invisible other.

XXV. It lay in its own hands

Distributed among the successors.
An ablation, so they say.
Unrestricted.
Superimposed on the iterative pixel.
Commemorated by desire.
Great powers were cooperating.
Prepared with a high degree of profitability.
Grayish pink in hue.
Joined by connective tissue.
The inertia of the unstressed.
Living means wanting.
A recognition of love.
Gratification from the unexpected.
Still impressed by our brief commotions.

XXVI. A small unraveling

We are inclined to disambiguate.
A second zone within the margin.
Evenly suspended, steadfast.
To say that conspirators are tried.
The oldest of political farces.
Civilization loses its ambiguity.
We ourselves become metrical rules.
A virtuous debasement.
Retarding and restraining influence.
Far from an abstract scheme.
Outside the theoretical.
We are connected to difficult tasks.
The slightest infringement.
A precise link in the chain.

XXVII. The expedient distribution

Insignificant clamor.
Classified into species.
Effecting both women and men.
A system outside of language.
To make love, to invent.
To deal with sequentials.
Arriving over and over repeatedly.
Inconvenient to describe.
To unhoard.
From our intentional avoidance.
Stultifying the strange.
An intonational constant.
The history of life.
Somewhere else we hope.

An eye for an eye (makes everybody blind)

Wild Night in El Reno (George Kuchar)

A short 1977 film by George Kuchar who died Tuesday at the age of 69.

Gadji Beri Bimba (Hugo Ball)

The uncertainty principal

Writing about creative ideas in general, Marianne English at Discovery News discusses a study released by Cornell University that examines a common bias arising from subconscious motivations to reduce feelings of uncertainty when confronted by the results of unconventional thinking: "In essence, feeling uncertain seemed to stifle people's ability to recognize creativity."

Here's the abstract from the study:

People often reject creative ideas even when espousing creativity as a desired goal. To explain this paradox, we propose that people can hold a bias against creativity that is not necessarily overt, and which is activated when people experience a motivation to reduce uncertainty. In two studies, we measure and manipulate uncertainty using different methods including: discrete uncertainty feelings, and an uncertainty reduction prime. The results of both studies demonstrated a negative bias toward creativity (relative to practicality) when participants experienced uncertainty. Furthermore, the bias against creativity interfered with participants’ability to recognize a creative idea. These results reveal a concealed barrier that creative actors may face as they attempt to gain acceptance for their novel ideas.

The study itself dealt with practical applications of creative thought, e.g. product design, but it seems like it might also apply to unconventional poetry, i.e. when confronted with a "difficult" or highly innovative poem that relies more on conceptual structure (or creative reference to external concepts) than a sense of traditional aesthetics, many readers and critics disregard the creative attributes of what they've encountered and judge the poem to be without merit--even though they've neglected to seriously engage the criteria by which the poem has been created.

In other words, the discomfort that some feel when confronted with uncertainty becomes a basis for a negative aesthetic judgment, regardless of the potential "quality" of a poem that--in its unconventional approach--builds from a challenge to ordinary concepts of meaning, language, or aesthetic inquiry. In this sense, we could say that "difficult poems" are rejected not because they lack quality but because they are difficult and unsettling. We don't know what they mean so we label them as meaningless or poorly written and judge them accordingly. The problem, of course, is when a judgment utterly disregards the creative (even dynamic) attributes of a poem only because it doesn't fit a predetermined model of what a poem should be.

Frequently, the relative inaccessibility of some contemporary forms of poetry is cited as evidence of poetry's popular and aesthetic decline. I can accept this as an explanation for a limited audience when it comes to some types of poetry--difficult poems require inquisitive readers who are willing to think creatively about what they encounter--but is a judgment of poor quality (i.e. a lack of aesthetic or literary merit) valid if that judgment arises from a subconscious distaste for radical innovation that prevents a reader or a critic from seriously examining (or even recognizing) the criteria by which the poem was created?

Anyways, its something to think about.