The hard work of poetry

... in modern light verse the author does all the hard work, and in modern serious verse he leaves it all to the reader ...

A.A. Milne, quoted in Goodbye Christopher Robin by Ann Thwaite

Now what do you suppose A.A. Milne meant by that? Is light verse really harder than serious verse? If so, in what way is it harder?


Milne wrote this nearly a century ago at a time when "modern" poets were abandoning rhyme schemes in favor of free verse. Light verse was still expected to rhyme, and that is still true today. But does free verse create more work for the reader? To be sure, many readers prefer poems that rhyme, but that is not necessarily because of the work involved. Rhyme may actually make the poet's work easier because it limits the options of where to go with a poem. Just as it would be easier to choose a cereal brand in a supermarket if there were only three options available instead of an entire aisle of choices, so a poem may be easier to write when one must choose from moon, June, spoon, loon, etc., than from all the words in the English language.

Or might Milne have been referring to the fact that serious poets are allowed ambiguity in their verse, and in fact are all but required to have ambiguity, while writers of light verse must make their meanings clear? For humor to be appreciated, it must be understood. They can't leave the work of interpretation to the reader in the way serious poets do. (There are exceptions to this, such as the nonsense verse of Lewis Carroll in Alice in Wonderland.) But is ambiguity easier than clarity? In many kinds of writing, such as news stories and history, clarity may be more difficult, but in fiction and poetry, maybe not. For art to happen, there should be more than one way to interpret a work. That means some degree of ambiguity, and that can be difficult.

Actors frequently say that doing comedy is more difficult than doing drama, never mind that the Academy Awards seem more often willing to honor mediocre drama than great comedy. If that is true in movies and on stage, perhaps it is also true in poetry as Milne argued. I can't seem to understand why that might be, but that doesn't mean it isn't. Consider that Milne, whose collection of light verse When We Were Very Young was one of the biggest selling books on both sides of the Atlantic in the mid-1920s, is one of only a few writers of light verse in the last century to become household names. On that list are the likes of Ogden Nash, Richard Armour and Dr. Seuss. Well-known serious poets are more numerous, but that may or may not mean their work was easier.

Although Milne's poems for children and for adults who remember being children were immensely popular, his work was not as adored by critics as he would have liked. Some criticism was savage and hurtful, especially when it came from writers he admired. So Milne was defensive, and this may have been the reason for the comment above.

My own view is that light verse, like movie comedy, is under-appreciated. But harder? I have no idea.