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Please be candid and don't take offence if others have different taste.
My personal dislikes?
-Deep sounding concepts and hyperbolic words taking precident over actual meaning, for one (I enjoy language, particularly unusual words, but I prefer to read them when the writer's bothered to find out what they mean, and I prefer to feel emapthy for something 'realistic', not fake hysteria and exaggeration. I get enough of that at work LOL! ).
-Poetry that judges/has a go at another person without making the narrator flawed in any way- for example a poem that says ALL popular kids are shallow/nasty/thick but this person is an angel and individual, and so are their buddies. Hmm. So that wouldn't just be a case of one clique disliking another then, both being equally capable of writing the other off? (Mind you, that could be the attitude in general that irks me, not the poetry).
-Lazy spelling and sloppy execution. I'm not saying everything has to be perfect, but sometimes it smacks of either not being bothered or being arrogant enough to expect us all to go 'wow, you don't have to bother using words properly, you're a genius anyway'. Hmmm. Never going to happen.
THESE ARE JUST MY PERSONAL TASTES, SO LET'S PLAY BY THE RULE OF 'WE'RE IN A SAFE CIRCLE, WE CAN SAY WHAT WE LIKE SO LONG AS NO ONE NAMES NAMES'. I know I just raised my voice- just have the feeling I might be grabbing the ring pull on a can marked 'worms'!
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Really shoddy grammar. Chat speak included.
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If it excludes the reader or makes him feel like he should not be reading it because it seems to be too private to make the external connection.
This does not make it bad, necessarily, just 'not for me'. -
Poetry, as well as any other writing or art for that matter, in my opinion shouldn't be judged on the reader's perspective OR personal feelings about it. If one wants to comprehend what the writer is trying to convey, one should try to understand where the writer is coming from, not where the writer should be going. Therefore, I cannot say that I have read a "bad" piece of poetry, granted, it may be hard to comprehend at first; but try looking deeper into the situation and try to observe the unseen, you may find that there is more than meets the eye.
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As I said several times, we are talking about personal taste and opinion, however you've touched on a matter which does infuriate many members here (and indeed led to the sister site of allpoetry being set up) so I'll say my bit nicely before some blunter members pop up.
Firstly, you seem to assume I'm disliking my dislikes because I'm closed minded, inexperienced with poetry/the world/empathising with others (or at least, your comments could certainly be interpreted that way) :
'it may be hard to comprehend at first; but try looking deeper into the situation and try to observe the unseen, you may find that there is more than meets the eye. '
In the nicest possible way - don't make assumptions about the person saying something merely because you disagree. I work with literature and language every day, I also work with young people and their emotions: if I weren't able to infer (read between the lines in literature) or empathise, I would not be able to do my job.
I've been through the 'anything anyone does is fine' phase - I found that when working to raise self esteem in others, this approach to creative arts often fails. The reason for this? Accepting anything allows people who don't feel up to persevering (because they feel they'll fail) a get-out clause, they don't persevere, and deep down they KNOW their work doesn't look/sound/feel as they pictured it in their mind. They go to their mentor (usually someone who is pretty skilled in the craft, as a secure 'life' compared to the young person) and get a pat on the head and an 'with art anything's OK, what you did expresses you - don't try to learn any skills, just express'. Often this is done with the best intentions, but it merely reinforces the idea that certain people can/should settle for less, skills-wise.
To put it bluntly, it's patronising and reinforces stereotypes of the middle-to-upper classes being highly skilled and intellectual, whilst the less well off being emotional, earthy, less articulate. It's sad because it came from a way of thinking which was intended to STOP that stereotype, but the 'there's no wrong, no failure, no standards' way of thinking is responsible for perpetuating a skills hole and a range of situations which lower self esteem and self expectation in young people.
Within my job, one of the things which makes educators, social workers and mentors stand out is the ability to tell a young person (in a constructive, caring way) 'you are so much brighter/nicer/more talented than that: what you are currently doing [be it behaviour, a poem, painting or essay] isn't as good as you could be doing ... let me support you and learn with you, by trial and error, so that you can be the best you can be.' That first step, finding the way to say 'sorry, but this isn't your best and that isn't meant cruelly, but to help you' is often the hardest for trainees. Often they fall into the 'anything goes' trap and try to patronise not only the youth but their colleagues because they confuse being chummy with someone with helping them.
Most of us need a mentor figure in our lives; for the poet (or artist, teacher, cook, learner driver...) this means someone who is able to supportively say something 'isn't good enough'.
Poetry IS an art (or maybe a craft, depending on your point of view). It does have to be the person's best work- it has to reach out to the reader. By all means, there are lazy readers who want everything spoon fed to them, but not every poem that doesn't work means the reader is being lazy. Some don't work in the same way that a cake baked with salt, not sugar in error 'doesn't work' - quite simply, that version of the poem needs some changes made to allow the poem to express its meaning to the reader. If simply splurging anything from one's brain onto the page is a poem (and that wouldn't even work as a therapy-poem, the methods used to help word-purge focus on an issue or relationship), then whacking anything from the kitchen in any order into bowl would be cooking. I'm sure there are some people who sit through dinner going 'yum' and spitting things out into napkins, others who patronisingly blame others for not enjoying the food, blaming their palates ... however the person's loved one, mentor or true friend would, if asked, make a friendly suggestion that perhaps the sacher torte was a little salty, and whilst it was a brave experiment, maybe using sugar might be better for when they have people round next time.
Poetry IS a creative process - it isn't therapy. It required thought, it requires practise, it requires personal standards. Any person, of any age, of any social situation is free to create poetry - it doesn't even need to be written down. It is NOT, however, the case that anything splurged down on a page is a finished poem and any reader (and the reader is the consumer, for whom the poem is created) who dares not to say 'mmm, great, so deep' is a shut-off, uptight nasty ignorant person. -
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My apologies
I'm sorry if what I said has offended you, that was not my intention, and as I reread what I wrote, I realize I should have elaborated a bit more, thank you for calling me out on that. Again I'm sorry, offense was not my intention at all. -
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None taken. I don't know you, you don't know me - one of those things with the internet! Things can sound personal when they are meant to be general.
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you're capable of being more succinct
while I understand
the use of
the passive voice disassociates a writer from what is written,
I believe
too much use will obscure the details
of the opinion being offered
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'you're capable of being more succinct'
Of course I am, when I choose to be.
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I thought I deleted this post
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Hear, hear! Tell it like it is SandMann
Yah now! That's what I wish I might have said. Good point. -
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WHOO *wipes forehead*
Thank you, lol, your reply helps me to be able to stand a bit firmer on my comment, not saying I meant any offense by it....but you're comment and reply helps, thanks homie
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When it has no music inside it.
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Now I understand why I read you Nik. You're so very "Britney Spears."
As we both know, that defines my tastes...
Call me a "Toxic" poet, baby!
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excessive use of pronouns
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When the poem is so internalised by the author that it becomes indecipherable by the reader. This is fine if they just keep it in a desk at home but why put it out for readership if no-one has a clue what you are talking about!
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For me, it would be when it looks like someone used a thesaurus for every word, attempting to make it some deep piece, but only ending up in making it look fake.
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Billy Collins
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The use of the words dieing, flying, crying, and sighing
or
love, above, dove
~Hippie -
Chat speak, bad grammar, bad spelling, over-used rhyme, cliche concepts, general suckiness.
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A poem thats essentially a boring piece of prose with line breaks
I got up in the morning
And ate some toast
Then I walked outside
And looked at the trees
Dire isn't it. *yawn*
But read much on the site and you'll run into a fair few of these, most commonly from people who think they 'tell it like it is' and 'write from the heart'
You don't- you're just boring. Usually the same people write unimaginative cutters poems and refuse to type properly. And use bad rhymes and punctuation.
Wow, I really have gone off on one now. Sorry for cluttering. Ooops. -
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The biggest no no for me is bad spelling.
FFS. There is a spell check available on here and if you so wish you can copy and paste into an E.mail. to send and spell check in there(It even does basic grammar for you).
I am not just talking about the young ones on here either, quite a few adults make basic mistakes and that annoys me.
Another thing that annoys me more than bad poetry is the fawning glib comments made by so called friends of the poet who would drool over
"ThE caT saT on THe matt and spaT" if it gave them kudos with their "family" member (for goodness sake if it is crap then tell them so I do not have to stumble on it as a gold winning entry in an AP incestuous contest)
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getting any kind of trophy is aphyxiatingly rare
and
there sems no correlation to the amount of work put into it -
nicely put tarcus. there is just one thing that pisses me off more than a bad poem, which is a blatant "wow, great poem" to almost any sort of crap. i understand that writers need encouragement, but this just fosters depravity of talent.
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Forced rhyme, too simple of words: "mad, sad, glad, happy words" as my teacher puts it.
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Well, firstly, here is how I begin to ascertain the badness of a poem...
if it makes me embarrassed for the writer
if I must quickly flit away after reading it
not only does this work for other people's poetry, it is also surprisingly efficient and accurate for judging my own...though the difference being I still usually post my own even after ascertaining embarrassed/flit-away quotient.
Now, to what makes a bad poem
Anything, anything, anything that uses chat speak. Ur gon incur my wrath...well, not my wrath but I won't like it.
A poem whereby the writer rearranges the line just so to accommodate a rhyme. This always looks pedestrian to me, or at least usually does and so I end up crossing the street and not at a crosswalk even!
A bad poem is a poem that
writes a sentence
in line breaks like
this without even
attempting to make it
sound somewhat
interesting. Spice it up
people. Add a dash of hope
for the poor smhmoes that deign
to read it.
But of course, that all said, a bad poem is only a bad poem in the eye of the beholder. And there are beholders who are blind in one eye and have the other stapled shut. But, I thank God for the eyes of the beholders who seek us out and encourage us even though maybe most of what we write stinks like shit!...they admire our aromas nonetheless.
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"A poem whereby the writer rearranges the line just so to accommodate a rhyme. This always looks pedestrian to me, or at least usually does and so I end up crossing the street and not at a crosswalk even!"
Yes! Like Yoda it sounds. -
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guilty of this, we have all been from time to time Hmmhhmmm.
words rearrange we to rhyme
HMhmmm.
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Up with this I will not put.
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"Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will."
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'though the difference being I still usually post my own even after ascertaining embarrassed/flit-away quotient.'
You're braver than me! I usually take them to my workshop and hope they are forgotten in their scruffy form before long ... except someone ALWAYS keeps the notes and asks how such-and-such is getting along. Yeah, I think, my poem on such-and-such is currently coming along nicely in the recycling bin.
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Well you see, I don't trust myself to know the difference
and if I like the smell of my own poo
I tend to scoop it up and see if others are willing to sniff it...
There is poo gold in them thar hills...and perhaps in your recycling bin! *digs rapturously through squeezy's rubbish with the intent of whipping any flakes of plausible writing bits off to the Foundry...for recasting into Emu eggs.
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Things I dislike about some poems
Not to take from anyone's writings but I really dislike poems that are prejudice against someone or something. I don't like people who judge another on their race, religions, or whatever.
I also, don't like bad spelling... grammar I admit I am bad about that myself.
trekekrgirl -
I wrote a poem a while back called, "The Song Of The Soul", where I tell that poetry sings from the soul, and tells others about life, love, tragedy, remorse, death, killing, violence, peace, and the like.
To me what makes poetry bad is that the author didn't put enough emotional content into his/her writing. I don't believe that a poet should be restricted by rules of writing just to impress the reader. Rather I feel the writer as a poet, should write from his/her soul, what he/she is thinking, and if it comes out free verse, experimental, partially rhyming, and none of this is according to Hoyle, then so be it. Poetry sings from the soul, and we must write it like it comes to us.
If a person does not read the poem right the first time, he/she loses the poem's meaning that the writer intended. -
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'emotional content into his/her writing'
Is emotion always the only way to get one's meaning and message across? Brecht commented that sympathy was the enemy of action- 'feeling' as a reader/audience sometimes makes you feel like you've done something (empathised) when you haven't taken the step the writer might want you do (actually DOING something).
IMO not all poetry has to be conventionally emotional to be effective. Something very '3rd person' but horrifically shocking might get the message across just as effectively- or something that calmly offers more than one perspective might provoke debate.
Catharsis is just one way in which writing affects us.
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bad grammer and if the person writes a poem that isn't deep. They need to feel what they are writing and undertand it. You can't just write somehting and expect people to like something you dont understand.
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I see also far too much poetry that is simply the first efforts of one who has barely achieved a literacy in poetry, and an immaturity combined with lack of education and experience which likely produces redundancy, triteness, and shows no time spent, less time revising.
Good poetry often requires work, crafting. It is not a mere babbling as if by one possessed with a gift of tongues. The gift must be there, but the gift must be earned. -
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'Good poetry often requires work, crafting. It is not a mere babbling as if by one possessed with a gift of tongues. The gift must be there, but the gift must be earned.'
Absolutely. Sometimes I feel like I get shot down in flames for suggesting that poetry has a craft element.
Raw talent is all well and good, but practise, experimentation and (perhaps unromantically) sheer hard graft usually strengthen a writer. The argument that it makes the poetry sound 'false' or 'fake' often comes from people who haven't tried the boring, 'hard work' route. Personally, I've seen plenty of rough drafts of famous poems in museums and if drafting was good enough for Donne, Wordsworth, Rossetti and Plath, then it's good enough for humble me!
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I do not like to see contractions in poems and words not spelled correctly can just kill a poem, Also, a forced rhyme is a real turn away. I have trouble reading really long poems. There is more,but I have a headache.
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I often make spelling errors, I rarely mean or feel the words that i write and I often use inversions (swapping the order of words around for the sake of rhymes).
Shoot me down for these things If you like but I still feel that my poems are worth reading.
What really makes something dismal to read from my point of view, is work that is metred, but poorly. I much prefer metred work with end rhymes, but when its done inconsistently or with stresses falling persistently between beats and beats falling on unstressed syllables, it's just plain awful. The English language is a mosaic of different rhythms and patterns which a good poet, or writer of any genre for that matter, will always be aware of and be able to work with. Ignoring these rhythms and patterns leads inevitably to a mess of potholes and tree trunks strewn across the path of the poem for the reader to stumble over. -
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'I often make spelling errors' - based on what you've written here, it looks like your errors are few and far between. A lot of people have moaned about spelling, however I think they mean cases where the writing is sloppy, using text speak etc'.
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Spelling errors, text speak and sticky caps can be annoying, but they're all entirely superficial. The way a poet manipulates the language and the rhythms within it is what they should really be judged on, assuming of course that they have something worth writing about in the first place. Surprisingly, the task of working with the ebbs and flows of English prose applies more strongly to free verse than to metred verse, because in free verse the words you choose are the entire show, there's no side plot of rhyme or beat, the poem is a blank canvas coloured only with the words of the poet’s choice.
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Agreed, but text speak and abbreviations should function as text speak or abbreviation (ie the syllables on the page should be the syllables the writer intends the reader to read). Too many people use shortened words and expect the reader to read the full one; the shortened version is an entity in itself - if they want the reader to read two syllables (for example) then they should use 'you are'; 'you're' has one, and is fine to use, provided that is is used as a one beat word.
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Bad/forced rhymes, poor grammar, bad spelling, use of chat speak/StIcKy CaPs, and anything to do with dirty pretty.
What I really hate, though, are poems which employ a ton of big words that, after a while, appear present only to make the writer look smart.
I also dislike using ridiculously deep and complex metaphors throughout the poem. Metaphors are all well and good, but c'mon...too many clog a poem up and make it almost unreadable.
I suppose, though, I could be biased--I prefer to use relatively simple language to express a deeper emotion or meaning, without relying much on metaphors.
Also, I agree with you when it comes to constructive criticism. I employ that same approach when I comment, only I'm a bit harsher; I suppose I'd rather just say "this sucks, but could be a lot better". Unless, of course, a poem is god-awful and cannot be helped at all. -
I think when you can't relate to it (in the way of exaggeration or it seeming too false) or if it doesn't get the intended meaning across.
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Anything that makes the reader think it is fake.
It has to be true to your heart. -
The characistic of poorly written
poetry is the same as poorly written critism.
1: poor command of the languge,
2: ignorance of grammer, punction,and spelling.
One must know the rules to brake them
effectively.
3. thematic wandering,
4. unintentional bathos,
5. excessive ambiguity.
6. not following the restrictions of form. -
Came back, but it seems that enough was said si I will say good-night.
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Lack of composition and passion if it reads and it sounds like a letter it's a letter. If it written and it sounds like one sentence after another than that's what it is. One can write just about anything and with the right composition and passion it’s poetry.
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squeezy
May 2 11:54 AM
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