I sympathize…

     …really I do.  Only, consider:  would you ‘abridge’ your wife? your best friend?  Can you somehow ‘abridge’ Leonardo’s Last Supper?  Would an abridgement of Jeremiah that allowed one to get at ‘the gist’ do anything other than offend God and man?  Of course, you say, it would be absurd to attempt such things, but my friend we do all that and much worse day by day.
     I write this not only as an artist whose practice demands at least that I attempt in all my sin and struggle to kneel before the whole work as it wants to be seen, read, heard.  Still, this really has nothing to do with my being a poet – there is nothing particularly exalted about that after all.  Those who fostered the notion of romantic genius, as though we poets had some sort of ability to simply read a book that can’t be cultivated by others were dead wrong.  You see, I’m also a husband, a salesman, a member of this here struggling and tiny congregation, a brother…  I’m simply a man, with no great claim to wisdom or perspicacity thanks to my ability with pentameters and trochees.  No, my friend, this isn’t even simply about these works of art, or rather, it is, but it leads to that more pathetic and destructive drive of which the mutilated work of art is one symptom.
     All that is intractable, all that is difficult, all that seems beyond us, we cut down to size and consume with the feeling of triumph and smug self-justification that can only be the result of our deep depravity, that warping of all that is in us, all that is ontologically good and yet twisted by the lust for domination.
     I understand how difficult things can be.  And remember, you are under no obligation to read any particular book – ‘reading lists’ are a self-imposed burden that, apart from the need for intensive and directed study toward some defined end, will only crush the soul.  Use wisely the little time you have, therefore, and don’t waste it on books that bore you, unless the demand of the hour is that you push through something boring for some great good.  Oh, and by all means, enjoy a rollicking good read – it is one of life’s great goods.  When, however, you enjoy such rollicking good reads, realize that often they are as such masterpieces of form and language, like Anna Karenina or Moby Dick or Paradise Lost [to name a few at random].  Remember this, and when you give some few hours of your scarce time to ‘em, be prepared for the works themselves to master you.  
    What I’m saying is that these works are as intractable as anything in the great good order of being.  They are not cut to fit the measure of our mediocre time.  Love ‘em or hate ‘em or simply find ‘em bewildering as you will, you cannot take ‘em apart and read only the pieces that suit you and hope to do anything other than mutilate reality for the sake of the the will to power and the false promise of an easier path.