I Don’t Get Poetry

Honestly, I just don’t get poetry. It’s one of my shortcomings I guess. But yeah, I don’t have the sophistication or whatever to appreciate it. The problem for me is, I can’t really distinguish what’s good and what’s bad. Like with music, it’s easy for me to tell what is and what isn’t a well crafted song. The quality is immediately apparent. Same with say writing. Pretty obvious what is and what isn’t good writing.

With poetry, I can’t tell at all. It’s a little better with like sonnets or whatever, poems with a fixed structure because you can better judge the effort, seeing how expressive and creative they are within the structure. Doing that well takes effort. But with like most modern poetry, it’s whatever structure people want, so it’s hard for me to judge the effort put into it. So again, hard for me to tell what’s good and bad. I dunno, I could rattle off a poem.

• touching the clouds
• he stands
• towering
•  alone.

carrying the hopes of the peoples
a multitude looks to him
he surveys the strange land
the land considers him
always watching
never alone
always alone

they know all of him
they know nothing

Yao Ming rules

Yikes, that was awful. But is it that much worse than other poetry? Hmm, actually, it is a lot worse. But still, I dunno, I’m just not sophisticated enough to appreciate poetry. I guess I’m uncouth like that.