The Modernists said poetry should be “difficult,”
(I think it was T.S. Eliot,
handsome, yet somehow, not)
which is to point out the obvious—
scientifically, everything alive is difficult;
how ignorant, then, to say poetry should be difficult,
when poetry-hating is difficult and being simple is difficult
and being a stupid ass is difficult. Making
a happy home is difficult. Holding still is difficult,
except when you’re writing a difficult
poem. The Marianne Moore problem. Imagine
Keats or Shelley insisting somberly: “poetry should be difficult.”
Ha ha ha. “Modern”-ism.
As soon as you really imagine something,
the difficulty becomes apparent, except,
imaginatively speaking, you forget all the difficulty,
even as the difficulty is overcome
with the difficulty hidden, forgotten for now
even as the land-march takes days,
and the poem, finally, elicits,
for at least the better part of the afternoon,
what feels like praise.
Scarriet 
Chado said,
October 17, 2022 at 11:10 pm
He sure LOOKS difficult…