probably because most of it is crap don't know if the various "poets" have the malicious intentions that mr. bioemerl ascribes to them, but i'm a consequentialist so i don't care i have written a few dozen poems and he's definitely right that it's damn hard to make what you write externally valuable in any way. not even sure how you would go about that
I found a poem by my Grandad, I only read a few lines before I realised what it was; he's in his very late 80s and his wife of over 50 years (and my wonderful grandmother) passed away a few years ago. The poem has no external value, why would it? It's written for her to help him grieve, and yes, from what I read it is really bad... Vogon levels of bad. But bless him he tried, and did, and I ain't going to be throwing it away, not even when he passes.
yeah it's sort of confusing. i like my poems, for example, but i wouldn't publish them. i have occasionally liked poems by refugee, thenewgreen, etc -- wouldn't put 'em with keats though. i just can't figure out why, necessarily. i think external value is important in pretty much everything, but poetry is an incredibly opaque, personal form of art
Don't disagree on most of it being crap. Guess I've been on a bit of a Longley kick lately. My thoughts are that the value of truly talented poetry (holy subjectivity...) is the ability to convey or facilitate a greater sense of emotional clarity or purity. The following quotes are attributed to Longley. Granted, there are very few people with his level of talent.And one of the marvelous things about poetry is that it’s useless. It’s useless. “What use is poetry?” people occasionally ask in the butcher shop, say. They come up to me, and they say, “What use is poetry?” And the answer is no use, but it doesn’t mean to say that it’s without value. It’s without use, but it has value.
Well, it’s much more complicated than solace. I like the Aristotelian notion of catharsis. And I think what art can do is to tune you up. I mean, if you think of an out-of-tune violin, and tuning it up so that it’s in tune, I think that’s what art is, and that’s what art does. And good art, good poems is making people more human, making them more intelligent, making them more sensitive and emotionally pure than they might otherwise be.