How to Recognize BAD Poetry

Free verse is a legitimate form. Like you, I use it often. The quality depends on the poem.

A good free verse poem has a subtle flow of rhythm, similar to spoken conversation, rather than a strict meter. It uses some combination of poetic techniques such as alliteration, repetition, allusion, and metaphor. Every word is carefully chosen for maximum effect. It is not "playing with the net down."

A bad free verse poem may crash and burn for various reasons. Most often, it reads like prose, or is simply incoherent. Many poets get lost without the structure of a form to guide them -- but form poetry is frequently denigrated today, so poets are often taught that 1) they must write in free verse, and 2) it's okay if the result is nonsense. Other times, too much structure leaks over and the poem doesn't really seem "free." The effect is not unlike a literary wedgie.

There are other reasons to write poetry besides the ones that require "good poem" to be in the goal zone. Therapeutic use, and passing a class (if the teacher lacks fine discernment, as many do), are among those.

Yes, therapy is one reason for writing poetry in which the quality does not matter. *ponder* I am not entirely sure why the effectiveness of that function is independent of structural integrity; that's something interesting to think about.

Another interesting point is that a skilled poet can take a moment of personal emotion and, through use of craft, turn it into a poem with broad relevance.

"I always read my poetry aloud as I'm working on it. I figure poetry started as a spoken form, and even modern poetry should flow easily when spoken."

Excellent idea. The main exception to this is concrete poetry, which is intended for visual experience.

"I may be a bit guilty of cliche, but I truly feel what's cliche to one reader isn't necessarily cliche to another."

You're into exception territory here again, which is fine. A novice ignoring rules out of ignorance or indifference rarely gets good results, but an expert can bend rules into pretzels and still get applause. Two points about cliches are: 1) they don't count as such if the target audience doesn't know them, frex if you're importing colloqiualisms from a different region; and 2) they can be great fun if stacked together or consciously played with in other ways.

"I've been told my poems don't always follow "proper form", especially when it comes to haiku."

Poetic forms are like recipes. If you put cloves instead of cinnamon into an apple pie, that won't turn it into beef roast; it'll still be a tasty apple pie, just a little different than usual. Hiding a jalapeno in your apple pie may or may not work.

"I refuse to read much modern poetry because I simply cannot understand it. It makes no sense to me, and I think I'm a pretty intelligent guy."

Precisely. Even after meticulous analysis, many modern poems contain little or nothing of interest. Readers who enjoy decoding intricate meaning are encouraged to look for "kennings" in Norse and Anglo-Saxon poetry; for structure, check out Welsh poetry.

"What's your position on "show, don't tell" in poetry? Is it always as vital to verse, especially to short-form poetry, as it is to prose?"

It's a valid rule, but doesn't always apply to poetry. It does apply to narrative poetry, which tells a story in verse. It's much less relevant to poetry written for sound or wordplay rather than storytelling. Other forms fall in between.

If the ideas are good, and it's the delivery that keeps crashing, continue encouragement. Technical skill can be learned. It's the eye for artistry that is difficult or impossible to learn if it's not innate. Meter, rhyme, and word choice can be fixed with suitable application of good workshops, books, and a whole lot of practice.

I've known writers like that too.

Strong emotions are welcome in poetry. Like dynamite, they require careful packing to be effective. Otherwise they just make a big stinky cloud. Look at one of the general poetry-posting LJ communities. Then look at some classic poetry -- Yeats is good at making angst actually work. I also like Kipling's "The Female of the Species." Compare those sets and you should get an idea of what it looks like when emotion is used well and poorly.

The more one knows about the rules, the more leeway one has to bend or break them and still create an effective piece of work. Breaking the rules out of ignorance rarely wroks. This is true of most arts, not just poetry.