Reflections on ‘Bad Poems’

Yes, there are straight up bad poems. And often, sure, because they are boring or sound & fury (signifying nothing).

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Readers (and certainly editors) do need to know what is bad or not good in order to have a frame to comprehend what is good.

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More often, I’m inclined to focus on poems that are private/personal vs. those that are written/ready for an audience/public consumption.

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There’s a good reason why, historically, many renowned poets have put their drafts of poems away  “in a drawer”, so to speak, for a period of time, and then revisited them.

In many instances, a critique circle or workshop isn’t going to cut it. You’re in a room full of egos. All too often, in a problematic workshop scenario, the situation feels like a bunch of other poets telling you how they would write your poem. This is unhelpful.

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We all know the modern impulse today— this desire to quickly get our work out into the world. A far cry from the long delays we know still exist in more traditional (read: not modernized) realms of the publishing world. There is something to this setting aside, this putting away, because you’re going to usually be the one to determine if your work is good enough to share with others. You can often figure this out simply through the passage of time.

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Bad poems can have utility. They can operate as scaffolding as you develop your toolkit to write effective poems that achieve your intentions.

A poem that adequately achieves the intentions you set out to write is a form of success. (Nod to Rachel Zucker.) If you addressed what you intended to, this is a victory in and of itself. Then, of course, comes the art. Delivering a shareable product is a different goal altogether. You must begin with the writing. You need to get the words down first. Then, you can begin to tinker with the words until they appear to sparkle in a manner that feels right.  

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Comedy is tragedy + time …

Draft + time → [yields] perspective

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Put another way— a new poem might feel like freshly mined gold… put away, you might realize that it was fool’s gold after all.

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Note:

Some of my views on the subject were previously shared on The Poetry Space_ hosted by Katie Dozier & Timothy Green. Check out Episode 37: Bad Poems