What makes a poem "good?"

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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!

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.

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.

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

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

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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.

Blarg said:

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.

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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.

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.

Blarg said:

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.

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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!

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.

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

Gondomir said:

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

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

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.

SinK said:

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.

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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?

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.

kborsden said:

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

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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:

kborsden said:

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.

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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.

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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.

William Haskins said:

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.

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This.

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.