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

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

lololol. No, it just means all your friends have to tell you that you do. ;P Oh, GOD. That is so true it's tragic in and of itself.

And I like free verse when it manages to show me why it had to be verse, rather than prose, why it had to be divided up into stanzas like that, into lines like that. I'm not being sarcastic; the best free verse poetry in my opinon DOES do that. Shows you why it's poetry.