Bad Poetry

[rayheinrich]

Can you tell me why this is bad?

The same reason anybody says something is bad: They don't like it.

I usually use 'bad' in quotes to mean 'a poem I don't like'; because
it's shorter and easier to type even though I know it helps promote
the belief that there exists a universal set of rules governing what
IS bad. This, by the way, does not preclude the existence of sets of
common-consensus rules, each adhered to by a large group of people.
Obviously there are. That, by the way, is the purpose of workshops
and teachers et al. The purpose is to teach writers how to adhere to
a particular set of them.

But you're right, the learning isn't just by reading it. The learning
would involve a teacher asking students to make a detailed list of
what, to them, makes it a 'bad' poem. Then she'd go over their lists
in class and comment on them and ask the class to do the same.

The next assignment would be to edit it to make it a 'good' poem.
A discussion would follow this as well.

This, as well, could also be used in a workshop environment by posting
the poem and have people do criticism of it just like it was a regular
poem someone had posted. The MAIN advantage would be that
everyone would feel free to be more severe because it wasn't
connected to someone in the group who could be hurt. (Assuming,
of course, that it was a poem that no one in the group had written.)