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

[crescent-moony.livejournal.com]

Poetry, like prose, can be fantastic, or it can suck. However, as it is a more difficult art to master, it's even easier to find sucky poetry than it is sucky prose-- and that's saying a lot. Only about 1% of all people can write poetry worth reading-- the rest just think they can, and annoy the shit out of everyone else in the process.

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

as it is a more difficult art to master, it's even easier to find sucky poetry than it is sucky prose-- and that's saying a lot.

*nodnods* That makes TONS of sense. I guess I haven't considered that writing good poetry is hard, which should be the linking afterthought to "so many attempts at poetry suck," but I hadn't made that afterthought leap.

[crescent-moony.livejournal.com]

I've just had a lot of time to contemplate these issues, as I took a number of high school/college creative writing classes. With poetry units. I almost ripped all of my hair out...