In the acknowledgements section of Tolu Oloruntoba’s celebrated collection, The Junta of Happenstance (Palimpsest Press, 2021), he thanks American poet Kimiko Hahn for two profound words of advice: “risk clarity.” He says (rather modestly) that he knows he has “failed often” but will keep trying. Thus, in addition to poems rich with historical context, such as “A History of Treachery,” there are poems as vivid and deceptively accessible as “Chuck Norris,” and, one of my favourites, “Child at Sleep,” in which parents wait for a child to drift off at bedtime.
What is the risk in clarity? How are we to balance, as T.S. Eliot suggested, “technical excellence” with “the expression of sincere emotion in verse”? How are we to know “when there is an expression of significant emotion, emotion which has its life in the poem and not in the history of the poet”?
Perhaps the risk is that there will seem to be insufficient artistry in the expression. That, if something is too directly stated or too easily understood, it loses the magic that poetry achieves by using language and rhythm to imply connection to greater, more meaningful ideas. “Child at Sleep” ends with three lines that turn a cozy, private moment into something shared and universal:
within the accordion crib
the machinery of rib walls
crates air for the world.
But when that child at sleep is lost, how can anything seem greater or more meaningful?
Fred Cogswell wrote Pearls (Ragweed Press, 1983) after the death of his daughter Carmen in 1981. Though he said, “it seemed that the power to write had died in me,” after her death, “poems poured out like pent-up water from a suddenly broken dam.”
While the inspiration may have been unrestrained, the torrent of poems nevertheless still flowed into the shape of familiar forms, such as in the opening sonnet, “Inside Rock’s Lethargy and Light’s Swift Spark,” which concludes on this exposed nerve: “… had I / But no identity I could rejoice / To see the one thing nature wastes is life.”
In the haiku “On the beach,” the form itself is an element of its clarity:
… gently the wind’s touch
wakes the sleeping sea; your hand
moves over my skin …
The opening and closing ellipses tell us more has come before and more will follow. But for that fleeting moment between ellipses, between the ebb and flow, there is this connection, the sensation of touch, before the wave crashes and the moment passes in nature’s incomprehensible waste.
The clarity in these three lines leads us to consider the entirety of human experience as momentary. We remember the hands that have moved over our own skin and the skin our hands have touched in moments within and beyond the ellipses.
I recommend both The Junta of Happenstance and Pearls as reminders that while we strive for clarity in artistry, it is also important to appreciate the artistry in clarity.
Notes:
The T.S. Eliot quote is from the essay, “Tradition and the Individual Talent.”
The Tolu Oloruntoba references from The Junta of Happenstance (Palimpsest Press, 2021):
“A History of Treachery" (p.21)
“Chuck Norris” (p.68)
“Child at Sleep” (p. 41)
“Acknowledgements” (p.97)
The Fred Cogswell references from Pearls (Ragweed Press, 1983):
“Inside Rock’s Lethargy and Light’s Swift Spark” (p.13)
“On the Beach” (p.36)
The Fred Cogswell quote is from the back cover of the book.
— John McNeil was a finalist for the 2024 David Adams Richards Prize, 2024 Deborah Wills Prize, and 2023 Alfred G. Bailey Prize. His work has appeared in The Antigonish Review, ‘Magine, and Camel: An Illustrated Journal of Narrative, and will appear in the flash fiction anthology Done in a Hundred.
You can read John McNeil’s poetry in Issue 306 (Winter 2026). Order the issue now!
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