Bad poetry

Category: The Web | 6 Comments | Posted 21:43

OK how about a longer entry again for a change? I started replying to emails, then got bored, then remembered something I've been meaning to write about for a while. Yes, bad poetry. A dreadful thing.

I'm talking about the "oh I take myself so seriously and have to express my feelings through this" kind. There's so much of it on the Net, because it's just too easy to publish your less than mediocre drivvle. I know this is cruel, and I know this is gonna be a cruel entry, but I can't help myself. It shouldn't be allowed. It's like, 'People, writing good poetry is a really difficult thing! Not everyone is made for it! If you're crap, keep it to yourself!'

Yes yes, that is indeed the way I feel about the issue. What's especially bad is poetry that doesn't rhyme. Written by amateurs I mean. It's usually an indicator of REALLY bad poetry. If your poetry can't sustain itself on rhythm and rhyme, you need to be really good to make it work some other way. The emphasis lies on strong imagery. Just putting words together and using line breaks in unexpected places doesn't make it poetry!
As I sit in this forest,
Of wooden sent, (sic)
I mean PLEASE!

And the topics! Love! Usually unrequited love, or love that had to end. Or, alternatively, being misunderstood. Very frequent in teenagers. Blech, give me a break. You think you are SO unique uh? Look around you. 1 billion people think they are just as unique as you.

Clichés and commonplaces abound. Poetry has to be powerful! Give me a good metaphor anytime, but don't compare love to a dew drop on a flower! 'So precious, so untouchable!' Yeah yeah

Haha. I was going to use lots of examples from the Net for this entry, and poke fun at them by making sarcastic remarks, but I feel bad about that. I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings. The examples I've used were rephrased so as to keep the awfulness, but make them unrecognizable.

See, that's another thing about poetry, you can't tell the author it's crap (if they post it on a public forum, for instance), cuz they'll be really upset. Which means that more & more people will be convinced that they write great poetry and should keep publishing it. Which again means that the Net will be flooded with more crap poetry. Thank God I'm not forced to read it all

PS this is not directed at ANY of my poetry-writing friends. The ones whose poetry I've read are WAY above average. If that wasn't the case, I wouldn't have written this entry