Bad Poetry project

When reading poetry sometimes one assumes that it is automatically an awesome poem because it is published in a book. Sometimes people also automatically assumes that if the poet is well known in literature, that his or her poem is automatically the greatest work of all. For example, one may assume that Shakespeare’s work is automatically great because his literature is used widespread in today’s society. But what one may not know about Shakespeare’s work in literature is that it was not seen as great as it is in today’s society. So the question we are left with is, what makes a poem great? Or on the other hand what makes a poem bad? A poem may be a great poem depending on its reader. No two person are alike in everything they do. People listen to different type of music, prefer different type of movies and believe it or not people are very selective about where they get lunch from, so why wouldn’t they be selective about what they read? When I was going through the anthology I fell in love with the poem “The Tale of Custard the Dragon” and thought it was a great because I love fairytale stories and poem, but if someone dislikes fairytale like things would despise this poem base on its content and its rhythm. Whether a poem is good or bad depends on the opinion of the reader and his or her point of view on the topic, rhythm, rhyme and flow of the poem.
In “The Making of a Poem, A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms”, I found many pleasing and displeasing poems in my search for a bad poem. The poem that stood out as the most displeasing poem in my opinion was “My Last Duchess” by Ferrara. In this poem we learnt about a man who is getting married, might be his second wedding or his tenth wedding, we do not know; he is talking about ...

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...a new wife. What shocked me the most in this poem was the fact that he was proud about what he had done and threatened his wife to be, with the crime he had committed. I personally dislike people who do wrong things and boast about it, as though it is the right thing to do. When searching for a poem that I find is good, I look for jolly poems. I look for poems that are easy to read, optimistic and comes to a closure. I dislike poems, stories, songs, books, movie etc. that leaves me wondering in the end. I like poems where people come to closure with what they have done. Perhaps if the author had ended “The Last Duchess” with the narrator coming to realization with what he had done and not boast about it I would not have found this poem as a bad poem that does not belongs in the anthology. When reading poems we need to remember that everyone have different appeals.