Writing Meta: Why don't I get poetry?

[amanuensis1]

During insomnia night this week, I read a professional insititution's glossy creativity publication that had been given to me. The photos were pretty, the essays...not as horrible as they could have been, the poetry I thought was appalling. Schmaltz, doggerel, sentimental claptrap. Amateur pirouettes on a page, terribly proud of themselves for showing off their cut-apart structure and boring as spit. These students didn't even know how to write limericks; there was a two-page spread of them and not one of them had the correct scansion of a limerick. God. I read through the book thinking, what the hell did they reject?

Is it just me? I always admit that I don't have a poet's soul; I have no inclination to write poetry other than funny doggerel, and very little poetry resonates with me. Sometimes it does. The moments are rare, but wonderful. Is it just me, is most poetry dreadful cloying crap? Just because you're grieving or in pain, that doesn't mean you can create good art.

Comments

[melonaise.livejournal.com]

It seems like successful poets must write THOUSANDS of poems in order to cull through them to pick out the least gooey 50ish to publish.

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

It reminds me of L. M. Montgomery's Emily books, where her teacher combs through her writings and says nearly all of it's terrible, but there are a few good lines in her poetry, and when she's disappointed he says, no, that's praise, to have ten decent lines of poetry in all that. "For want of ten good men, Sodom would have been saved," he says.