Soooo... like I said, I've bought Stephen Fry's book on Poetry, the Ode Less Travelled. And, like I said, technical knowledge is important!!!

Says Fry:
"But however well or badly  we were taught English literature, how many of us have ever been shown how to write our own poem?

Don't worry, just lift the lid and express yourself. Pour out your feelings.

We have all heard children do just that and we have all wanted to treat them with great violence as a result. Yet this is the only instruction we are ever likely to get in the art of writing poetry.

Anything goes."

Fry quoting Jan Schreiber:

The writing of poetry has been made laughably easy. There are no technical constraints. Knowledge of the tradition is not necessary, nor is a desire to communicate, this having been supplanted in many practitioners by the more urgent desire to express themselves. Even sophistication in the manipulation of syntax is not sought. Poetry, it seems, need no longer be at least as well-written as prose."

Then, quoting Auden:

" The poet who writes "free" verse is like Robinson Crusoe on his desert island: he must do all his cooking, laundry and darning for himself. In a few exceptional cases, this manly independence produces something original and impressive, but more often the result is squalor -- dirty sheets on the unmade bed and empty bottles on the unswept floor."

Then, my favourite part of the book. (p 176-177):

"I do not despise free verse. Read this:

Post coitum omne animal triste
i see you
!
you come
closer
improvident
with your coming
then -

stretched to scratch
- is it a trick of the light? -
i see you
worlded with pain
but of
necessity not
weeping

cigaretted and drinked
loaded against yourself
you seem so yes bold
irreductible
but nuded and afterloved
you are not so strong
are you
?
after all


There's the problem. The above is precisely the kind of worthless ass-dribbleI am forced to read whenever I agree to judge a poetry competition. It took me under a minute and a half to write and while I dare say you can see what utter wank it is, there are many who would accept it as poetry. all the clichés are there, pointless lineation, meaningless punctuation and presentation, fatuous creations of new verbs 'cigaretted and drinked', 'worlded', 'nuded', 'afterloved', a posy Latin title -- every pathology is presented. Like so much of what passes for poetry today it is also listless, utterly drained from energy and drive -- a common problem with much contemporary art but an especial problem with poetry that chooses to close itself off from all metrical patter and form. It is like music without beat or shape or harmony: not music at all, in fact. 'Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down,' Robert Frost wrote. Not much of a game at all, really.

My 'poem' is also pretentious[...]." [then there's some more rant]

Sooooo. Now that I've quoted all I had to quote (for now) let's proceed to examine this little piece I've found in a forum. And just to be intellectually correct and all, I'll even link the forum.

The QYS Message Board

Oh, and just a quick little disclaimer: Anyone offended by whatever I or anyone else on this webjournal says about anything can get mad at me or whoever wrote said comments. These comments are in no way endorsed by Stephen Fry, his publisher, or anyone else other than the author of the comments. I'm merely using what he wrote to prove my points.
Just to be safe.

(And I'm not doing this just because I've got a personal grudge against the author of the poem. It really IS a horrible poem, after all.)

"My Dragon"
I look to the
skies in hopes
to see that my
Dragon has come
back to me.
It is truly hard
to believe but
my heart has
been captured by
thee.
Truly magical as
it may be for the
Love of the Dragon
grows deep inside
of me.
I call upon him in
the night, for that
is when we take
flight.

(don't worry, the author of this poem shall get full credit for her work. Once I'm done. See, I don't want to set any bias. And this is not bashing, or flaming, it's CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM. Thank you.)

Over to you, Drew.

*snickers*Jenn...I feel like a kid in a chocolate shoppe as far as the poem you want to see critiqued, where to start first hacking first?

The poet/tess is a bit too verbose, trim down the language, don't tell the reader what's there, let them see it for themselves, to this affect, word choices are kind of feeble. DUDE...its a powerful topic, let your words echo that passion! What does it feel like to go riding, the caress of scales against thighs

Line breaks...what can I say? The write's so focussed on keeping to this line structure that its taking away from the poem, in fact it really kind of makes the reader wonder what exactly the person's trying to get across Oo As an example:

Truly magical as
it may be for the
Love of the Dragon
grows deep inside
of me.

Is she pregnant? Is she talking about the emotion, the physical act
:-?:-?