What is bad poetry?
Say ‘poetry’ to most people and their minds go to Keats, Shelley, Bryon and/or Wordsworth — the classical poets — the guys who have stood the test of time, a test that proves that their poetry was good. Thinking about their work though, these poets were not competing for the public ear with the people who wrote the rap lyrics. They were writing at a time when the public ear was attuned to the sounds of early morning roosters and folk tune-humming domestic staff. These days the public ear is overstimulated. Bombarded with the grind of heavy machinery, traffic, advertisements, sound grabs, a wall of white noise that makes silence an uncanny experience. While poetry was once valued for its ability to entertain, inform and stimulate discussion, these days it is cherished for its ability to create a pause, a moment of stillness in the midst of chaos. The long poems, like Morte D’Arthur and The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, were the movies of their day, or the television mini-series. They
