A while back I read a list of authors John Ashbery reads in order to kick-start his poetic imagination and among those listed was Laura Riding (Jackson). And I can see why. Often Riding’s poetry is just as confounding (and frustrating) as Ashbery’s. But at the same time, with captivating language that pulls you into its playfulness even if after several reads you are left with large gaping holes of confoundment. Though, maybe that’s part of the point.

Riding was born in 1901 and studied at Cornell, after which she connected with various literary and intellectual types and allowed her the freedom to proceed with her own personal theories on poetry and its artistic practice. In reading her works, the earlier poems tend to be shorter and more lyrical, and therefore, more abstract. And these are the poems that she is more known for, at least from what I was able to find on the internet. While ‘meaning’ is difficult at times, it is noticeable that she makes great use of opposites, such as:

grand - small
self - nonself
being - nonbeing
vision - blindness
certainty - uncertainty
knowledge - ignorance
comprehension - confusion

However, her later poems tend to be longer and work more as philosophical inquiries rather than dynamic lyrical expressions. And the philosophy continues working with opposites to move towards a poetic viewpoint which embraces paradox, finds the edges where two opposites might meet and how they can then regenerate, affirm and negate one another. The result is poetry that both invigorates itself through oppositional tension, but at the same times, reaches a transcendent equilibrium. Albeit, at a cerebral level rather than emotive.

If I tried to explain her poetry much more, I would inevitably fall into personal subjectivity. The absorptive and reactive experience of the poetry directly by each individual reader being what counts. Although, its worth pointing out that she was about fifty years ahead of her time and would have been surrounded with many agreeable colleagues during the 1970's when the move was made from modernism to post-modernism. But I suspect she was largely unheard of outside of her own circles during her life.