Poetry Takeaways

After a month of doing poetry, here's my big three takeaways.

1. Sturgeon's Law is really pronounced for poetry. Most poetry (same as most prose) is bad. The problem is, bad poetry is obnoxious in a way that's hard (and sometimes unintentionally funny) for bad fiction.

2. Most of the things that make fiction good also apply to poetry. Faust is fun, because it has dramatic characters. Whitman is good, because he has a sense of adventure. THE NIGHTINGALE VS THE LARK VS FLOWERS XXX 9001 is bad, because it's not actually about anything interesting and it's been done a million times.

3. Meter and rhyme are bullshit. Both in that they sometimes force weird lines that would be better without, and because people ignore them. A lot. Good for them, they should.

That's some kind of life lesson by the way. Ignore the rules/customs when it makes doing the thing they're supposed to do harder.

 So, in the end, fan of good poetry, hater of bad poetry, and there's a lot of bad poetry.

I assume they'll be a more formal reflection at some point as part of the challenge.