Out of curiosity, I looked up the website of a writers’ group to which I used to belong (from 1996 to about 2007). They still seem to be meeting, but one detail surprised me. They no longer critique poetry in the group. I know good reasons why that is not good.
Many people don’t care for most poetry. Most modern poetry annoys me; I consider it whiny, humanist drivel and most of it fits into the category of “trying too hard”. Many of of the free verse poets I’ve encountered were only doing free verse because they did not have the skill or work ethic to do structured poetry, so the lack of form was a cop out from doing the work.
Those problems with poetry are why more people should write poetry and should get a thorough critique from writers who are not “poetry people”. Good poetry does take a lot of work; it is an exercise of words, images, and meter.
Compare writing formal poetic structures with weight lifting for football players. At no time during football does a player lay on a bench to raise and lower a weighted bar, but every football player engages in that activity as part of the training. Weightlifting makes the player stronger. Writing structured poetry makes a writer stronger.
Writing is a form of communication. Poetry must also be thought of this way. The poet puts words to paper to communicate an idea to the reader. Whether structured or free verse, the reader must be able to receive the message without the poet being present.
This is where the group critique helps. In an effective writers’ group, the author being critiqued listens, possibly taking notes, but never speaking. The other members discuss the work as though the author is absent, referring to the author in third person or just as “the author”. Doing this helps the group members speak more freely and prevents the urge for the author to defend the work. The author sees exactly which parts of the message were received by the readers and, hopefully, understands which parts were missed.
By reviewing the critique, the author/poet can revise the work to make their message more clear. With experience, the author builds a talent for communication so their audience will miss less of the message.
Again, poetry can be a bit abstract, or just flaky, and a good critique from friendly but honest group members can really help. For someone serious about their poetry, this is invaluable. They can develop beyond “why does life have to suck so much?” dirges to poignant little descriptions of the beauty of aggregate in sidewalk composed of clever but simple words. On the other hand, if the poet just wants to identify as poet to inflict their nonsense on others, a couple of good critiques may discourage them.
If you have a group, I hope you will critique poetry. Whether you have a group or not, I hope you will experiment with poetry. Just so you know such things exist, I hope you find one of the truly awesome poems by a great poet and that the poem has an effect on you.