"And this is a glimpse into my take on poetry..."

SO I love poetry and I love blogs. SO MUCH. And I’m SO EXCITED to be blogging again. (Half sarcastic but actually half true) But also poetry really confuses me 10/10 times.




And so what makes a poem good?


Well, of course, all the basics. Imagery, tone, diction, symbolism, other words that make you sound smart, etc. Throw in some deeper meaning and some other pizzazz, finesse the reader a bit. That makes it good. But great? That’s another story.


To me, great poetry has all of the qualities I mentioned earlier (obviously). But what separates good from great is the vested interest of the poet. How well can the writing be related back to their lives? How passionate is the poet’s diction? What is his/her main purpose in constructing a published work of literature? Can we tell how powerful the poem was to the poet?


And I think great poems are pretty dang hard to find.







Concerning Robert Frost, I think his best poem was “The Road Not Taken.” Not for any of the cliche reasons, like it’s probably one of the most common poems seen and schools use it in yearbooks and stores print it on bookmarks, but because it umbrellas all of the other poems he writes. In every other poem we’ve read by Robert Frost, there’s been at least one line (or even one word) that relates to his theme of traveling a different path than what was expected.


Even though he has poetry dating from before and after the 1916 published date of “The Road Not Taken,” I feel that his writing in that poem constructs a theme that relates all of his other works of literature together. For example, in “The Axe-Helve,” despite the strong metaphor for two men exploring each other’s sexuality, also represents taking a different path. In the early 1900’s, was homosexuality acceptable in society? Only in more recent years are people beginning to open up to how they really feel and through societal standards aside. Also, in “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” Frost seemingly mimics the exact writing style of “The Road Not Taken,” with his use of four stanzas and rhymes at the end of the lines. The only difference is that each stanza is four lines in Snowy Evening where there are five lines in Not Taken. 

And, given that traces of his words in “The Road Not Taken” can be widely found in other works of literature, given that this was an extremely powerful poem to Frost, given that he has a powerful passion for what he wrote, I think that “The Road Not Taken” was Robert Frost’s best poem.


But, if I were to go on and begin describing what makes a bad poem, well, who really am I to judge from a poet’s perspective? All I can do is make determinations from a reader’s perspective. And, to me, other than lack of connection, lack of at least a small hint to guide the reader on the path to what the poem is possibly about, lack of care for the future reader, poetry really can’t be “bad” if it means something to the author. It shouldn’t be up to me to determine “great” from “bad” when I feel like we should at least try to find the good? What makes me the who-says on a piece of work a poet probably spent days, weeks, or months on? Who says my opinion as a reader is even valid?


Because why should I be judging the value of a poem that belongs to someone else?





But, if I had to, I’d probably say “The Death of The Hired Man” was my least favorite that we’ve read as a class. (Kudos to Mackenzie L. for banging that poem analysis out!!) It might’ve been the fact that I had a headache that day, or the fact that I was up later that night before and had a hard time focusing while in class, or any combination of any factors that could possibly contribute to that poem being my least favorite (like maybe it was just because it was soooooo long and my brain shut off). To me, I felt like Frost used way too many words to try to convey one meaning, which I don’t entirely get in the first place. There was way too much dialogue, to the point where I couldn’t tell what was what and who was talking when. I feel like I couldn’t connect this to any of the Frost experiences I know of, I couldn’t take any hints as to what the poem was really about, and I didn’t think Frost really wrote this for readers to understand.




Now, maybe in his eyes, this is his best piece of work. But, from my perspective as a reader, I believe this was his worst.


And this is a glimpse into my take on poetry.