<div class="page traditional" style=" background-color: #fff; "> <article> <header> <h1 style=" font-family: 'Lato'; color: #000;">Bad Poetry </h1> <p class="byline">Karissa Alcox </p> </header> <div class="main"> <img src="/uploads/53ce67120c123.jpg" class="title-pic" alt=""/> <p class="summary" style=" color: #000;"></p> <p><span style="font-family: Georgia;">"Everyone these days writes bad poetry."</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Georgia;">I agree. You wrote a bad poem this morning when your mom asked how you were doing and all you said was “fine.” You write a bad poem every time you say “not too much, you?” and you write a really bad poem every time you ask “how’s it going?” without actually wondering how.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Georgia;">Your friend wrote a bad poem about a "non-stop, lemon-drop, crop-top sunset." It doesn't even make sense, you say. It was clearly aided by an overzealous rhyme generator, you can't even tell where the clichés start and end, and how can a sunset be "crop-top" anyway. "It's a bad poem. You wrote a bad poem."</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Georgia;">Sure, “everyone writes bad poetry” but everyone also plays Somewhere Over the Raibow on the ukulete on hundred times, and everyone knowns how to make pad thai. Why frown upon a less-than-perfect poem? Everyone needs to start somewhere. With every bad (or dare I say it? mediocre) poem, I’m a couple steps closer to a good one. Every interesting thought or perspective I record is practice. It’s experimental: how do rhymes fit with anger? Does iambic pentameter suit a bird story? What does white space do for nostalgia? We need to try these things out, like a painter tries a landscape in acrylic and a portrait in sharpies.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Georgia;">I really think being a good poet is less about having the technical skill required to make a thought sound beautiful, and more about having beautiful thoughts. Seeing beautiful things. Noticing terrible things, or extraordinary things. Being an artist is about watching the world. It’s about what you notice. You don’t think “What should I write poem about?” You think “How can I tell this story, this feeling, this secret?” You know how you feel right before finally telling a secret? That’s the feeling before a good poem comes out. Being an artist is about collecting secrets. Writing them down is about letting them go.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Georgia;">Ultimately, I do see words as barriers. Just like I can sketch a representation of a crime scene, I could write my inner monologue from waiting in line at the post office. Nothing I do will perfectly transfer that memory from me to you. But if I can get anywhere near to expressing my true self, to connecting with you through experience, to making you feel something - then maybe there’s a poem there. How often do we misunderstand each other’s use of a word? Any exercise that gets someone to think deeply about the way they use their words is a benefit to everyone. I think we would all do well to write a few more poems from time to time.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Georgia;">Here’s my secret: Everyone is a bad poet.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Monospace;">Image manipulation and illustration done by Danny Fast.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Georgia;"></span></p> </div> </article> </div><!-- /page-->