Life & Wisdom Quote by Douglas Dunn

Dunn is pushing back against a fantasy poets sometimes inherit from the classroom: that the “ideal reader” will patiently decode every reference, tonal shift, or formal trick the way a critic might. His line has the plainspoken authority of someone who’s spent a career watching poems meet real audiences in real time. A poem, he insists, is not a riddle with a single correct solution; it’s a device for effect.

The first clause makes a modest, almost utilitarian claim: impact is the baseline requirement. Not “beauty,” not “originality,” but consequence - a poem should land. Then the second clause punctures the ego that often shadows artistic ambition. “You can’t expect” is a corrective, a refusal of entitlement. The subtext is ethical as much as aesthetic: if poets write only for readers trained to catch “all the nuances,” they’re choosing a gated community of comprehension, and then acting surprised when most people don’t have the key.

Context matters here. Dunn’s work is known for emotional clarity and social attentiveness; he’s not allergic to complexity, but he’s skeptical of complexity as a status symbol. The line doesn’t argue against nuance; it demotes it from goal to byproduct. Nuance is what deepens a poem for the reader who returns, not the tollbooth that must be paid before anyone is allowed to feel.

It also quietly defends the audience. Partial understanding isn’t failure; it’s how art actually works. You catch the weather of a poem before you map its climate. That’s not a compromise - it’s the medium doing its job.