Writing Notes in Poems

My post-colonial training had taught me to be suspicious of readers who want the "ethnic" writer to do the work of the native informant. I am against providing extensive notes for the poems I am writing. I don't want to explain the historical context of the Arun-Barun-Kiranmala story too much, I don't want to provide a glossary of each and every Bangla word I use in the poem. Instead, I want the reader to do some amount of work. I want them to look things up. I want them to think about the world I am writing in. But after getting back the manuscript with KRA's detailed feedback, I am wondering about certain things. For example, I have learnt that not only shouldn't I take for granted my American readers' knowledge of South Asian/Third World fairytales, I shouldn't also take for granted their knowledge of Greek mythology. Like, I discovered very few of my readers recognized who Briseis is. This made me think about ways of reading a lot.

One can argue that Briseis is a minor character. So it's not too hard to miss out the segments where she appears. But on the other hand, "missing out" on things also reveals ways in which we are taught to see things in a text. If an epic is all about valorizing male military heroes, and most of the readers go to the text expecting that and without questioning the basic premises of male martial heroism, chances are they would miss out on lots of things. What this means is that, any writer who is "revising/rewriting" into existing narratives, is also trying to show the readers different ways of reading the canon. As a poet, I have the responsibility of opening certain doors for the readers. And I should do that. If writing a slightly longer note helps me in that task, I will do it. Because at the end of the day, it's not my erudition that's at stake. What is at stake is that I am trying to show the readers that there are other things to think about while they approach a very familiar canonical text. That arrogance, that I won't really add a note to it, I would rather have the readers struggle through it, seems to be kind of an academic elitist exhibitionism which I can do away with.