I'm currently taking a class called Interpreting Literature, during which we read a good deal of poetry, (hence the rather random hub on it).  As a writer, I've always had a love-hate relationship with poetry.  On one hand, there's countless rules.  An ode's rhyming pattern must be ababcdecde, a haiku must have so many syllables per line, and so forth.  But on the other, you have poets like E.E. Cummings, who took every rule about grammar and poetry he could think of and stomped all over them.  For anybody who enjoys writing or reading it, it's a complete conundrum.

Personally, I write a fair deal of my own poetry.  But my awareness of these high standards and endless rules has always made me hesitant to share it with others.  I've gotten better about sharing, putting my "work" on an artwork-sharing site, but all my poetry still rests on a single, password protected Word document, hidden from prying eyes, and the eyes of those who chose to write about.  Perhaps my fear of allowing others to see my writing appears to be, well, irrational- but I can sit here and tell you that it is solely because I am petrified of being called a "bad poet".

Though I've managed to avoid the label so far, my reluctancy is something I think I have in common with more people than I can ever know.  It seems like people have become more critical than ever with just about everything, but having the precedent set by those such as Shakespeare, Whitman, Hughes and Woolf doesn't make it any easier to present an original poem.

Poetry is truly an art from the heart.  They can contain some of the purest emotions known to man; they are a bearing of the soul.  And whether these feelings are wrapped in blankets of metaphors and similes, or blatantly displayed, they are important and directly connected to the author.  Yet, such a thing still exists that people feel the need to call some of these works of art "bad poetry".  Which, brings me to the question: What makes poetry good?  Is it the rhyme schemes, or the ability to use iambic pentameter?  And does the lack of these so popularly perceived skills make a poem bad?

Much like economics, there lies a "fallacy of composition" in poetry.  In simplest terms, the fallacy of composition is assuming that what is good for one person is good for the whole.  Readers and critics of poetry alike are guilty of falling for this fallacy.  Just because a reader, or a group of readers large enough dislike a poem, it is damned to the depths of a writer's works, too humiliating to ever be so much as looked at again.  But what these critics fail to realize is that no matter how much popularity a poem does or does not have does not measure it's worth.  Sure, a poem can be "great" based on how many people read and rave about it, but the worth of a poem is also greatly dependent on how much of themselves an author injects into it.

Which leads me to my point.  There is no such thing as a bad poet.  Any poem written has some emotion behind it, driving it and no doubt allowing it to connect with somebody who comes across ands reads it.  Every poem has merit, whether a critic deems it so or not.

So poets of today, do not worry about sharing and writing, reading and performing.  Those who enjoy your poems are the only readers who really matter.