Swizzle Stick

Questioning Poetry

What makes a poem good?
Abstraction declared
by the concrete?

Is it the reader
who makes a poem
bad or good?
For better or verse?

Is it the mood
of composition
that matters,
or the mood
of interpretation?

Does it lie
in extended
metaphor,
or stand in truth
fully concrete?

Is a good poem
well behaved,
only breaking rules
with strategy?

As a rule
I don't rate
poetry about
poetry
but sometimes
like this time
I write it

How important
are puns & did you notice
the pun in my title?

I have questions
& answers
about scansion
& voice.

Is poetry what's
lost in translation?

When a poem falls
in a forest
& nobody's there,
does it still
make a sound?

& tell me,
is poetry supposed
to help?

Should I use
the technique
of rhetorical question?

Has my best poem
arrived, or
is it on its way?
(This isn't it.
No question.)

I wonder
do poems change colour
in certain lights?

Is a poem a conversation
or just veneer?

How privileged
is poetry? What's
its day job?

Is a good poem one
that keeps
being read?
When is your audience?

What one poem am I writing,
time after time?

Is this poem finished, yet?

April 18 - question something