Crap-tastic Poetry...does it exist?

I have always found poetry to be very personal and in that same vein subjective. In essance meaning that what I enjoy, someone else may not and vice versa. Poetry is about making a connection with the words on the page. Someone's connection is established through who they are as a person, or rather their life experience. A life experience is created through interaction with family, friends, society; how some one is raised from childhood to now; the crazy obstacles that someone has had to overcome; personal attitude; and life philosophy. Based on those factors, it is impossible for two people to have the exact same life experience! I don't care if you're twins, there will be differences between the two of you! At any rate, it is because of one's life experience that a connection can be established with a poem or not. If no connection is made, does that make the poem bad poetry? I don't think so, it just means that one reader out of many, has no connection with the poem. Similarly, the same can be said about bad poetry. What I find to be unacceptable, someone else could think is the cat's meow.

It is impossible for me to come up with specific crieteria for bad poetry because I an having trouble formulating coherent thoughts this week and since my opinion is no better than someone else's. But at any rate, here is what I feels makes good poetry, and the opposite would be what I consider bad poetry:

In terms of metre and rhyme scheme, those are secondary when considering poetry good or bad. To me, it is all about the words on the page! Are they fresh? Bring new meaning to old cliches? Is there some sort of pattern established, like metre but nothing concrete? Some poetry that I have read in previous classes had good metre and rhyme scheme but I found to be unenjoyable because the language used was lame.

Literary devices are important, but not necessarily in the stringent sense of there must be metaphors, similies and the like. Rather, I like poetry to take me on a ride through a vividly painted world. This world would be fashioned from text and the expressions used to convey the virtual picture to me! If it is done with similies...cool. Metaphors, paradoxes, and hyperboles, sign me up! Allusion, anaphor, alliteration and assonance...sure why not! I'm not picky on what is used but it must captivate my imagination and hold it hostage.

To support my few opinions/views I have posted some works of poetry that are less than stellar. I will be honest and say that these are mine, from a very very very long time ago! We're talking like more than 8 YEARS AGO! Enjoy the cheese factor and be a little on the gentle side when commenting on the poems please. They may be crap but they're my crap =)

The Truth

I love him with all my heart
Even though we are so far apart
When I look at a picture, all I can see
Are his happy blue eyes looking at me
With that grin on his face
In my heart I keep his place
For I know there can never be
Anything between him and me.

* I had to fight temptation to edit that one as I typed it out. Grrrr being young and silly*

Untitled

He pledges his undying love to the wild

The unknow. The scary. The dark.
"I love to live on the edge" his sould bellows
Loud enough for all to hear because he craves the attention
No thoughts of fear enter his mind as he enter the woods
There is no light save for the sparkle of light from his curious pupils
They dialate in anticipation of what could be lurking
The unknonw. The scary. The dark.

* That poem was unnamed because as soon as I was done writing it, I put in bright pink gel pen: "This poem has problems!" I guess I knew that it was crap and therefore undeserving of a title. *

sv