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

[rexluscus.livejournal.com]

I think there's so much bad poetry because it looks easy to people who don't know any better. It doesn't require a large volume of writing, like a novel does, or even a narrative, for that matter. So people who think the hard part about writing is generating a lot of text think "oh, poetry, I can do that."

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

I believe your theory! I hadn't stopped to think about it that way. I just assumed that everyone who writes poetry does it because they think, "I feel so DEEPLY about this; I should write a poem, because that makes good poetry, when you feel deeply."

[atdelphi.livejournal.com]

My wonderful job has in the last six months allowed me to read literally thousands of bad poems, and rexluscus has hit the nail on the head. At least once a day, I mutter to myself, "You have to know the rules to break them!" and wish I had the means to send each of them a copy of Stephen Fry's The Ode Less Travelled. It's akin to the people who create abstract art without having any grounding in non-abstract styles.

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

I should look for that! Stephen Fry's so much fun.

[atdelphi.livejournal.com]

One of my favourite quotations from the book: "It is as if we have been encouraged to believe that form is a kind of fascism and that to acquire knowledge is to drive a jackboot into the face of those poor souls who are too incurious, dull-witted or idle to find out what poetry can be."

[rexluscus.livejournal.com]

I'm sure there's plenty of that too. That's another thing that makes it "easy" - you don't have to think or plan, just express! Easy!