Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
Exposition Kills Poetry
Most exposition is an imposition
Like the supervisor who shadows you
Babbling incessantly needless admonition
Blocking your work so that nothing gets through
Respect your verse, how it dreams, how it flows
Your poetry is your will, your work, your way
But if you have to explain it in prose
Your verse is left with nothing at all to say
Your poem is in itself your exhibition
Of art – so ditch the cluttery exposition
Exposition:
So, like, you know, what I’m saying here is don’t talk about your poetry because that’s talking about work instead of getting it done and if you have to explain to the reader what your poem means you’re not allowing the poem to be true to itself and so why attempt the discipline of meter, rhyme, metaphor, simile, narrative flow, and the many other elements of poesy if you’re just going to repeat in prose what the meter, rhyme, metaphor, simile, narrative flow, and the many other elements of poesy should be doing if you have crafted your work with artistry as well as imagination because exposition implies that either you don’t respect your work and your reader or that you have been deliberately obscure in your verse which in the event is pointless because a poem is itself, it is supposed to communicate an idea, a dream, a hope and not simply flounder about as a soup of disconnected words in a sort of the king’s new clothes of deception which is patronizing and not clever at all because if a reader who is reasonably well read and understands an age-appropriate catalogue of literary, cultural, historical, and artistic allusion to make connections then you have failed the reader and, worse, failed your own attempts at poetic art.
