What makes a poem "good?"

[juniper]

I'm getting back into reading and (possibly writing) poetry after a very long break. College was probably the last time I wrote any poetry, literally decades ago.

Tastes aside, what makes a poem "good?" Memorized, quoted, published, anthologized, nominated -

What causes people to say "Oh yes!" about one and "Oh no" about another at open poetry readings?

Word choice? Structure? Universal theme? Imagination? Imagery? Simplicity vs complexity?

I'm pondering this as I'm preparing to take a poem WIP to my writing group. This is something I started a few weeks ago, polished up more this morning, and am thinking of how to improve it further.

We have a few poets in this large-ish group, and I hope a couple in particular will be there. One's work I admire in particular - her words are precise, but her poems still need some work on the reader's part to get into the meaning. They're not just flat out telling me what's what.

It seems easier to describe "good" novels - compelling story and characters, creating and solving problems for themselves, overcoming hurdles, forming relationships with others - good grammar, varied sentence structure -

Poetry seems much more nebulous to me. It seems somehow wrong to say "that poem is bad, this one is good."

As I said, poetry is just now re-entering my life. I appreciate your thoughts on this.

[celestialwolf]

I would say good poetry has vibrant imagery, powerful words, thought provoking themes or some other way of "grabbing us". If it doesn't grab us, it's just an ok poem in my view.

[Blarg]

Is a poem doing what it attempts to do? Is it doing it in a way that is interesting, vivid, or unique?

That goal, and those characteristics, separate good poetry from bad more thoroughly than lesser questions which can be subsumed within them. For instance -- some would say technical virtuosity is not only a must, but sufficient in itself to drive a poem and determine its worth. Others might say a poem without social messages or intense imagery is not much of a poem.

If instead asked whether a particular poem's display of technical virtuosity was at all original or vivid, one might have a better idea of the value of its technical virtuosity by setting it in context of the broader expectations we would use to separate art even from great craftsmanship.

If one were to ask whether a poem with a powerful and compelling social message communicated that message in a way that made use of poetry's ability to use language vividly, one might find it would have better been written in prose.

If one were to ask whether a poem's intense imagery was in service of anything besides immediately pleasurable effect, one might question how vivid the poem really was and whether it was accomplishing anything better than visceral amusement to be immediately forgotten.

The difference is between principles and techniques. One may learn and enjoy endless techniques, but not even a thousand will make a good poem. They need to be utilized in service of sound principle.

[JSDR]

Thoughts on this (as a poet who reads poetry) and totally opinion-based and subjective:

Good poetry freezes time.

After you read it, there's a moment of perfect clarity. For that split second, the world comes into perfect focus. And then, it starts up again, and *because* you've just read the poem and you experienced that time freeze, the world looks a little duller.

Good poetry dissolves membranes.

Have you ever had some kind of pain? Like, a stomach ache or a weird crick in your neck? You try to tell someone, but really, there's no way to communicate it thoroughly, because there's no possible way that other person can feel exactly how you feel. So you use metaphors and similes: it feels like someone stabbed me with a knife, it feels like a hammer pounding on my brain. Good poetry erases the membranes between you and another person, and you know exactly what they're talking about, even if it doesn't have a single simile.

[Mutive]

Obviously just an opinion but...

The reason I love poetry is that it is language at its purist. I read more fiction. But fiction has things it needs to fulfill than the sheer love of language - it has plot, characters, etc. - and all of this means that the language can be so-so or derivative, and yet the work is still gorgeous.

Poetry needs to be pure language. It needs to find new ways of expressing sentiments that go beyond the trite. That's hard to do - which is why I've stopped writing it. ;) It also needs to have a kind of pure joy for language as language, rather than as a way of conveying literal meaning.

[Norman D Gutter]

I believe the best poetry, that which we think is good or even excellent, is based on metaphor and imagery. The poetic devices of meter, rhyme, word play, irony, personnification, etc. are all important. Done well, they can make a so-so poem into a good poem. But it is metaphor and imagery done well that lifts a poem to memorable status.

I look back over the poems I've written as I near the end of my poetic learning decade, the ones that seem best to me feature metaphor to make the point. The next best ones present images that I believe are palpable. Others, written in very nice meter, usually with rhyme, that might tell a nice story but which have no metaphor and perhaps limited images, are not as good, IMHO.

NDG

[Magdalen]

Animacy
Aspect
Case
Clusivity
Definiteness
Degree of comparison
Evidentiality
Focus
Gender
Mirativity
Modality
Mood
Noun class
Number
Person
Polarity
Tense
Topic
Transitivity
Voice

When a poem carefully attends to all of the above, and does it well, it's sure to be a swell read!!


Oh, and gud spellin is rael important tew!

[lorna_w]

I don't know.

I mean, I know it when I see it but I have no formula for great poetry. I think of some of my favorite poets--Billy Collins, Mary Oliver--and I can point to lines, poems, moments. They often make me say "ah yes, I know that feeling, that's it, exactly." When Carolyn Forche had that colonel spill the bag of ears--wow, I just knew I was looking at greatness. Images, yes. Insight. And something more, a something that I can't wrap language around.

At open mike poetry readings, your looks and personality matter and humor sells. This does not automatically add up to good printed poems or poetry that lasts. I've had people applaud and laugh at poetry readings, and that's nice and all (and tidier than suffering thrown tomatoes), but it's not a publication. It's not a check. It's a moment.

You ask one easier question: Bad poetry tells rather than shows, it uses lots of emotion words (sad, sorrow, happy, angry, etc.) without ever making me feel a hint of emotion, it is too often rhymed and those rhymes strain grammar to the breaking point. It fosters confusion or boredom; it may use several words that end in -ation. That's not a complete list--I've seen lots of bad poetry--but those are the most common problems. And I feel confident in the "rightness" of this assessment, so I do think it's fine to call some poetry "great" and some "bad"--and most (including mine) falls in between.

[attacus-atlas]

I've been wondering this for a while.

I started writing poetry years ago, and while I like certain poems more than others, I have no way of telling whether anything I write is any good.

I still do it, though, because I love it.

[JRH]

A good Poem MUST COMMUNICATE on a variety of levels utilizing ALL the tools at the Poet"s disposal. Look to the Classics such as Yeats, Eliot, Frost, Byron, Tennyson, Browning, Kipling, and the Romantic poets to learn how it was done.

Jim Hoye

[Magdalen]

The spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings

according to William Wordsworth,
if you think William's words are worth
anything!



It is necessary for the poet to have a certain personal distance from the event or experience being described that he can compose a poem that conveys to the reader the same experience of sublimity. With this distance the poet can reconstruct the "spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" the experience caused within himself.

http://www.wdog.com/rider/writings/wordsworth_and_coleridge.htm

[Blarg]

I think you'd have to write off a lot of both Wilfred Owen and Charles Bukowski -- poets who could hardly be more different in terms of subject matter and tone -- in order to go for Wordsworth's notion here. He describes one kind of poetry -- not all. And thank goodness. I would hate to lose Owen. And would feel guilty about losing Bukowski.

[kborsden]

I think you'd have to write off a lot of both Wilfred Owen and Charles Bukowski -- poets who could hardly be more different in terms of subject matter and tone -- in order to go for Wordsworth's notion here. He describes one kind of poetry -- not all. And thank goodness. I would hate to lose Owen. And would feel guilty about losing Bukowski.

While I am in total agreement that not all poetry needs to be emotive, handle emotions or themes related to any sense or concept of emotion -- I do feel that the quote Magdalen posted is adequate as to what may, in a sense, be equated to fractionally describing something that gives a poem gravitas/potency by design/method or nature - just sub the emotions et al for subject/concept. I feel you may be misinterpreting what it is in this sense that Wordsworth is saying. You have to first de-construct in order to formulate to phrase and/or narrative; to choose your building blocks for reconstruction. It is the internalization of an event/experience/image/idea/concept that gives the poet ownership, but the break down and reassembly that makes a poem. It couldn't communicate otherwise. "back to the machine gun" (Bukowski) is very dissociated from the subject, but has a few sharp personal/emotive expression injected -- these injections are what colours the poem, but the rest gives the outline; the reader understands the complexity of the subject through the blandness of impersonal references juxtaposed against the expressive injections and the shifting internal to external subjects in frame. You can't tell me this isn't an example of the poet taking distance from the core concept first and then re-approaching. It's a prime example of it in very clear language, you can see the steps... free verse/poetry by numbers as it were.

[kittyCAT]

Normally I find poems quite beautiful if it has one of two things. 1. Flow, 2. Meaning.
If it has a bit of a rhythm, it catches my attention. If it's about a meaningful topic, maybe something I can relate to, I'll definately take a look at it.
And when it has both, that's when I go, wow. :)

[Magdalen]

I think you'd have to write off a lot of both Wilfred Owen and Charles Bukowski -- poets who could hardly be more different in terms of subject matter and tone -- in order to go for Wordsworth's notion here. He describes one kind of poetry -- not all. And thank goodness. I would hate to lose Owen. And would feel guilty about losing Bukowski.

Yea, what kie said. I think you are being unnecesarily exclusionary, if I might observe without being considered divisive or anything other than in casual disagreement with your overall perceptions on this issue which I would further establish is to the exclusion of any other perceptions you may have (or are having) at this time. I guess it depends on whether the poet or the poem or the reader (or D all of the above) have the spontaneous overflow!

[SinK]

I think there are two questions here and answering only one will fail to satisfy.

The first is "What makes a poem great?".

and the second more practical is "How do I write great poetry?".

The first will be to the casual reader something along the lines of emotional response be it engagement, amusement, melancholy or misery. Which pretty much sums up the responses so far. I think some people may like poetry because it does something technically interesting or impressive because I think to boil art and beauty down to one thing psychologically is a mistake.

The second question I think comes down to training. Poetry is a craft like any other and like most crafts some part, like meter and rhyme, you can learn the way you would a physical action through repetition and review. Others like choice of phrasing I think are trained more like the neural net your brain actually i,s by constant exposure to good examples.

[Gondomir]

Does the poem move you? If it does, it is good.

[kborsden]

Does the poem move you? If it does, it is good.

Good point, but when does 'good' become 'excellent'? What is it that determines that divide?

[SinK]

I've been thinking about this recently and I think the question might be meaningless.

"Good", with regards to poetry, is a subjective sense of liking the poem. What goes into that gut reaction will be your entire history; emotional, cultural and physical. Trying to work out what things a poem must check off for you to like it seems bass-ackwards. Either you like it or you don't if you don't then no matter what checklist it meets you still will hate it and if you can like things that lack any of the qualities listed in this thread as necessary for "good" poetry. What makes it memorised, quoted, published, anthologized, nominated is that many others have histories that give them positive gut reactions too.

The process of working out what makes good/great poetry is only helpful to the writer of poetry not to the reader. Its not meaningless in that the search wont have an effect because the search will feed into your history but I think it is probably about as meaningful to your enjoyment of a poem as being tired is.

[kborsden]

I've been thinking about this recently and I think the question might be meaningless.

"Good", with regards to poetry, is a subjective sense of liking the poem.

I don't think it becomes subjective (the level of how good it is) until after it's been well-crafted. There is a skill to writing poetry and that skill is what sets the well-written nature or not.

Simply saying that whether a poem is good or not is subjective undermines all poetry and the ability that one requires to write/craft it well.

So, that said... what makes for bad poetry?

[William Haskins]

writing a poem is like making love. you'll never know if you're any good by yourself (though the practice may have its own rewards).

success is measured in the elation of your partner.

[SinK]

I don't think it becomes subjective (the level of how good it is) until after it's been well-crafted.
This is begging the question.

What I am getting at is that the idea of well crafted can't be worked out a priori.

To answer the question "What makes a poem good?" you have to gather the poems that are perceived as good and look at what qualities they have. So to answer the question what makes a poem good you have to decide what poems are good in the first place which is a subjective process. That our subjectivity is predictable doesn't make the experience any more objective.

As for this:
Simply saying that whether a poem is good or not is subjective undermines all poetry and the ability that one requires to write/craft it well.
I would refer you to this:
Originally Posted by SinK
The process of working out what makes good/great poetry is only helpful to the writer of poetry not to the reader.

[kborsden]

You make interesting points and I'm not disputing them in their entirety, but I don't feel you can say that the ability to write well is subjective. It may effect the writer more than the reader, but the writer writes how they do through that ability -- so the ability to write well has direct bearing on the reader also, just less than the writer may initially think/hope.

[Ambrosia]

writing a poem is like making love. you'll never know if you're any good by yourself (though the practice may have its own rewards).

success is measured in the elation of your partner.

This.

[Gondomir]

How much does the poem move you? Do you go to a happy visual place for a few seconds and then continue with your mundane existence? Good. Are you stunned, weeping, mouth agape, transported to a world you never knew existed? Excellent. Do you smile and inwardly muse, "I learned something interesting just now by reading this poem?" Good. Does the memory of reading the poem haunt you for days like a repeating song and change your life in some meaningful way? Excellent.

[William Haskins]

if i read a good poem, i come away changed.

it could be a slight change in perspective or an alteration in my degree of appreciation or empathy or a significant transformation.

but, in my opinion, a good poem is one which sends its reader away changed in some way.

[Blarg]

Good point, but when does 'good' become 'excellent'? What is it that determines that divide?

I don't believe there is a single standard.

When I read literature, I take joy from what it does and sometimes even what it attempts -- just that it has the vision, the daring; often times that it has the moral concern and integrity to bother caring one way or the other about anything in this solipsistic world.

When I read lighter fare, I delight in its accomplishing what it sets out to do. It can be equally clever. Good comic pieces can be delightfully sharp and insightful. Good sci-fi, adventure, and horror can have a bravura sense of story, pacing and emotion that even some wonderful literature cannot touch.

Both types of work can be great within their respective realms. Comparing them one to the other, literature is given the nod as superior by default in western culture. But I don't believe it necessarily is. It can tread the same ground and use the same stock characters exactly as genre fiction can. It, too, can embrace cliche unknowingly.

Perhaps what makes the good great is how well it accomplishes what it sets out to do. That's a great deal of what I look for when trying to evaluate poetry as well as prose. And it strikes me as a pure perspective. Judging something by what it doesn't even set out to do can be silly. Judging authors as if they couldn't do something else because in one or many works they have chosen not to strikes me as muddle-headed. And believing literary authors on the whole can "write down" to a genre "level" is naive. Yet we tend to assume it, as if talent were on a sliding scale rather than a tree with many diverging roots and branches.

I've seen books by John Updike and Saul Bellow that can't hold a candle to The Star-Bellied Sneetches, Salem's Lot, or The Hunger Games. And I've seen books by Roald Dahl and Dennis Etchison far deeper, better written, and more lasting than will be the miserable pap of an Ann Beattie.

So I don't believe there is good vs. great except in the simplest sense, with the most direct comparisons. I believe there are different kinds of great. And that something's greatness isn't easily established by conventional divisions between literary and genre, comic and serious.

[Ed Panther]

That is a tough question and I wish I knew. I wrote some poems that I thought were terrible back in 10th grade but my English teacher raved and raved about them and how good they were.

My little sister last year asked me if I could write some poems for her so she could turn them in. (yes, cheating) I sat down and with passion and focus wrote a few poems for her, and trust me, they were much better poems than what I wrote in 10th grade.

I anxiously waited for my sister to call me and tell me how much the teacher raved about her poetry, but the teacher just gave them an A but with no additional commentary or compliments. (I must add that it wasn't the same English teacher who I had)

I think poetry to some extents is like ballet is to the vast majority of the population. They can tell when it is paralyzingly good or if it is embarrassingly awful, but aside from the two extremes they are in the fog about it.

[Blarg]

I think poetry to some extents is like ballet is to the vast majority of the population. They can tell when it is paralyzingly good or if it is embarrassingly awful, but aside from the two extremes they are in the fog about it.

Agreed. Poetinahat said something somewhat along those lines about rhyming versus non-rhyming poetry, something like, "Bad unrhymed poetry drops away without a sound, but bad rhymed poetry makes a splash on the way down."

There are also vastly different tastes and sensibilities, which can preclude proper appreciation. Even people well-versed in poetry may look right past what other people consider poetic. Some poems are just not constructed in a way, or have goals, they are familiar with. Asian poems, and poems after traditional Asian sensibilities, are often like that for westerners. Many of them are thematically poised as questions, or as leading one to question. Sometimes they even end in a question mark. Western poems, by contrast, tend toward sharing answers, and closure. Whether through emotional honesty or an ideal clarity of spirit and mind, things are knowable; the poem, an act of will that comes to an endpoint rather than a beginning, may be their revelation.

When confronted with poetry that doesn't resolve itself or seem interested in doing so, Westerners may feel unnerved, unsympathetic, even ripped off. Asians may feel the goal has been accomplished.

[kdnxdr]

In support of all aspiring poets everywhere:


writing poetry = good


WRITE ON!:e2headban

[NAThomas]

I believe the best poetry, that which we think is good or even excellent, is based on metaphor and imagery.
NDG

I agree with this, - but would add that it is the sense of movement that makes the poem good, and metaphor is the highest form of movement as it is trans-figurative, moving the subject from tangible to allegory; when we apply the allegory as a new way to view the tangible, trans-figurative movement occurs again.

Movement is what excites the imagination, - something has to be happening.

The base movement is the intelligence of the thing, the physical facts, actions, and abstractions; the craft movements are the use of poetic devices (i.e., rhyme, alliteration, meter, assonance, etc.); physical movement is achieved thru the unspooling of the successive concrete images; trans-figurative movement is achieved thru good metaphor; lastly, the philosophic and/or emotional movement is expressed in the resolve (someone previous called this the moment of clarity) as achieved by the intelligence working in concert with craft, heightened by strong imagery and good use of metaphor.

Or something like that, in my opinion. Although "good" in the general sense (as in the selections I read in current publication) seems entirely subjective and adherent to criteria I cannot understand. Or maybe it seems that subject matter trumps craft, - I don't know. But most of the poets I dig are dead, - long dead.

[kdnxdr]

Welcome NAThomas, enjoyed your post.

[Blarg]

Interesting way of putting some good ideas, NAThomas.

Or something like that, in my opinion. Although "good" in the general sense (as in the selections I read in current publication) seems entirely subjective and adherent to criteria I cannot understand. Or maybe it seems that subject matter trumps craft, - I don't know. But most of the poets I dig are dead, - long dead. I'd guess most of us feel this way sometimes, maybe often.

But I do find some modern poetry more diggable even without what you call "craft movements," or with few or subtle versions of them, when it reaches artfully into metaphor. Metaphor is often bundled into a warty tangle in poetry both new and old, but I am delighted to find active metaphoric imaginations at work behind at times the most ordinary modern styles.

Older styles seemed to telegraph it more, but that doesn't mean it is missing elsewhere.

[dobiwon]

if i read a good poem, i come away changed.

it could be a slight change in perspective or an alteration in my degree of appreciation or empathy or a significant transformation.

but, in my opinion, a good poem is one which sends its reader away changed in some way.
(I wish I had said this!)
I couldn't agree more

[NAThomas]

Blarg, - you are right. I think that last bit may have been me venting over the last issue of "Poetry," wherein was printed some of the most inane works I've ever encountered, such as this gem: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/243148 Seriously? Which leaves me to conclude that either I'm an idiot for not getting it, or an idiot for continuing my subscription...

[Blarg]

Wow, that's ... way out of the parameters of what I like ...

I love that site for its archives, though, including not just poems but articles.

I have certainly seen a ton of poems on there I don't care for, but it's like that with many if not most sites, for me.

[kborsden]

Seriously?

Must've been a slow submissions period ;) That's bad, very bad...

ETA: you should see the rest of her pieces (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/linda-kunhardt)

[kborsden]

It is fatal to decide, intellectually, what good poetry is because you are then in honour bound to try to write it, instead of the poems that only you can write.
~Philip Larkin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Larkin) (9 August 1922 – 2 December 1985)

[dobiwon]

Must've been a slow submissions period ;) That's bad, very bad...

ETA: you should see the rest of her pieces (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/linda-kunhardt)
Wow!?? I wonder what kind of critiques these would have gotten here?

[SinK]

Perhaps they are some sort of cry for help?

[kborsden]

Have to say it, Don -- even if it's out of context with this discussion, great to see you around. You may very well have been active, but I've not seen you, so it's great, yes, great to see you post. Hi.

As for those poems. I thought the same thing. Can you imagine?

Perhaps they are some sort of cry for help?

Aye, the publication's cry for help: better submissions PLEASE!!!

[kdnxdr]

Quote:
It is fatal to decide, intellectually, what good poetry is because you are then in honour bound to try to write it, instead of the poems that only you can write.
~Philip Larkin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Larkin) (9 August 1922 – 2 December 1985)
__________________
Great quote!

[JeffyFive]

Personally, I think what makes a poem good, is emotion. If you write what you feel, then it will help to capture the mood that you're trying to create. For example, if you are in a really good and happy mood and decide that you want to write a poem about winter, it's not going to work. You have to feel what you are writing, in order to make it any good. So, feeling happy isn't going to allow you to write anything remotely good about winter because it's going to prevent you from creating that mood of deadness and desolation that comes with the winter months. I hope that makes sense. :)

[kdnxdr]

What if winter makes you feel frisky?

[JeffyFive]

What if winter makes you feel frisky?


Hahahah... it was just an example, trying to convey my point. :)

[Blarg]

Funny thing is, though, we have multitudes of moods and outlooks inside us, waiting to be tapped at any time. Sometimes they're easier to get to and harder to avoid, but most everything leaves a mark we can come revisit later.

I'm glad of that, in a way. I like the availability and utility of distance. I wouldn't want to have to have someone close to me drop dead in order to write a poem about mortality; I wouldn't even want to fall in love if all I was going to get was a poem out of it. Some of my poems have pain in them, but I don't sit on a tack to write them.

[Blarg]

Quote:
It is fatal to decide, intellectually, what good poetry is because you are then in honour bound to try to write it, instead of the poems that only you can write.
~Philip Larkin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Larkin) (9 August 1922 – 2 December 1985)
__________________
Great quote!

Yeah, that is a great quote -- nicely perceptive.

[kborsden]

Thanks Blarg and KDNXDR, I read it a few years ago in an essay published in a magazine and thought I'd share it.

[Brandt]

Thinking about this question gives me a headache. I'm not sure of an answer, but its pursuit makes for some wonderful insights that have been shared.

For me, in my evolving view, good poetry accesses some aspect of the human spirit for the reader and reminds it on some level (be it vague, intense, or in between) of its relation to the rest of existence. The 'how' this is accomplished seems to be a pretty big tent, i.e., whether more formal verse or somewhere along the road to the other end of the spectrum.

Personally, I think good poetry also has a 'graceful' quality... it flows well and moves forward with a grace/rhythm that is beauty in itself. The way it is constructed through device, syntax, meter, etc. accounts for this and is the 'craft of the poet. I think of the difference between watching Joe Normal run a 400 meter race vs. watching an Olympic athlete run the 400 meters. They're both running, but the fluidness and grace with which the Olympic athlete runs is simply a thing of beauty in comparison.

A 'great' poem is to me one that does all that, and in addition, takes me to a place I don't believe I would have reached/seen on my own. It causes, among other things, fascination and appreciation, and that place is one I am thankful for being shown. In that sense, I suppose it could be considered subjective to some degree, and probably is. But I think 'great' poems have universality to them... an element/message/reveal that is interpreted in the human spirit and has more than a glancing impact. They can be about the raging battle, or the tiny sparrow caught in its midst... or whatever, but they do more than entertain -- they pluck something out of the whirl of existence to show us uniquely... that stays with us.

The ideas of movement and distance mentioned in this thread have merit in my mind as well. Reminds me of a dance between the poet and the reader. The movement is the excitement, the experience, the holding the reader until the end of the dance when they will then be able to look at the entire experience as a journey they were thanful to be a part of. The distance is a 'proper/appropriate' distance that neither steps on the toes of the partner, nor stumbles away clumsily breaking the embrace.

[Xelebes]

Blarg, - you are right. I think that last bit may have been me venting over the last issue of "Poetry," wherein was printed some of the most inane works I've ever encountered, such as this gem: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/243148 Seriously? Which leaves me to conclude that either I'm an idiot for not getting it, or an idiot for continuing my subscription...

I was hoping there would be a pun there (there might be), but yeah, definitely not feeling it.

[DL Hegel]

Can I define what makes a 'good' poem? Would it do any good to say what I like, dislike or am indifferent about? If I made a list of all the things I love in poems and someone followed it religiously, it might still fall short. It's more complex than a formula.

What is important for me, excluding mechanics, style or other specifics, it's the message and is it conveyed to me effectively.

When I write poetry I try to include universal theme and it's either polluted or enhanced by my view, my language, my style and technique choice or my mythology. It can work or not work. Be written once or rewritten dozens of times. My audience or readers are free to love it or hate it or not care.

It's all opinion.

[Magdalen]

Can I define what makes a 'good' poem? Would it do any good to say what I like, dislike or am indifferent about? If I made a list . . ..

It's all opinion.


And yet, there's something to be said when so many minds of vastly different times and trends can all agree on something, call it "good" (I wish this thread's OP had sought "great" instead of "good"!!) and even, possibly recite from memory a snatchet of such:

Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty," - that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.


http://englishhistory.net/keats/poetry/odeonagrecianurn.html

But that's probably just my blithe spirit talkin'!!!*






*these footnotes and taglines are creating monsters out of my posts!! With all due respect to Mary, Percy & John.

[DL Hegel]

It is Mags, and a big difference between good and great.;)