Good Poetry vs Bad Poetry — Do You Agree?

The essense of bad poetry seems to be that it is a Goof-on-Ya. It is all smoke and mirrors designed to fool you into thinking that it means something, when actually it means about as much as a Rorschact Test — an ink blot in which you are supposed to see something.

Often the bad poem is composed almost entirely of words like vapor, mist, haze, cloudy, shadow, gauzy, and many abstract metaphysical words like love, yearning, music, hope, spirit, goodness, etc.

These words are strung together like a hall of smoke and mirrors. The reader is invitted to walk down that hall and find some meaning there. It’s a game of Goof-on-Ya. The poet is putting us on, having a goof on us, trespassing on our credulity and goodwill.

The good poem, has ping. You know that the poet is describing something very real, not just to him/her, but to you as well. Take a line by Dylan "threw the bums a dime in your prime". It’s got action. It got a picture of an event. It’s got concrete terms — dime — bums. It’s got a possible allusion to John D. Rockefeller Sr. who was famous in the 20′s for handing out dimes to the indigents he met on the street. It also relates to possible street musicians in the 1960′s who would leave their guitar cases open on the street as they played, and passersby who liked the music could throw in a dime, or a dollar. Anyhow, Dylan is not just talking about his hazy, gauzy, feelings of hope and love and abstract clouds in vaporland. He is making a presentation. He is carrying the burden and performing the mission of the poet by manifesting something real. Frost is great at this, and T.S. Eliot, and Shakespeare. You know the poem is not a goof-on-ya counterfeit designed to fool you into thinking there is meaning where there’s really just a string of cloudy abstract words.

Emily Dickenson wrote poems with true ping. They ring out clear and honest. EE Cummings and Lawrence Ferlinghetti did too. They are not trying to get over on you with counterfeit — they are giving you the real coin, tested in the crucible, fashion in the mint of experience of real things and real events.

Or, do you think, a rose is a rose is a rose, a poem is a poem is a poem. Who is to say that one is good and the other bad? Why isn’t the hapless musing of little Billy goofboy just as valuable as a work of art as any sonnet by Shakespeare. We need some equality and some democracy in the arts. So, break dancing and ballet — same diff. Goof on Ya poems and songs by Dylan, same diff. Jackson Pollock and Rembrandt same diff. Beethoven’s 9th and a tractor pull soundtrack, same diff. Good versus Bad is just a distinction made by elitists and snobs, who don’t want to really get down with the homeboys in the hood. Poems are all equal.

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