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

[venivincere]

Yes... that was on the spot.

The "Oh," is vital. If I dropped the "Oh," I would have lost the accented syllable in the first anapest foot. "Oh," in this instance, too, indicates a response, which would be expected from "in my aid" in the previous line, because a defense usually follows a question or attack and doesn't materialize out of thin air. For example, this sort of exchange would be perfectly natural: "What's this book doing out on the counter?" "Oh, Liesle left it out for you to read." The "Oh," sort of softens the response, makes it more palatable. If you leave out the "Oh," the response is more terse and less forgiving of Liesle. In the limerick, it makes sense that the polite people would soften the blow, so to speak, so "Oh," seemed a natural thing to include.