Do Most People Like Good Poetry Or Bad Poetry?

Maybe a better title for this post is, what is good poetry?

I'm actually a little stuck for an answer here. I'm thinking the answer should be, it depends on what you want your market to be? or it depends on what you want your poetry to bring you?


I've read some amazing poetry from people who I'm assuming don't make any money from it, or even write that often. And then I've read what I would consider to be horrendous poetry from people who appear to be earning a fair amount selling the poetry as greeting card inserts, or similar... Yes, a lot of people seem to like 'greeting card poetry'! In fact, people will purposefully walk into a shop to look for rhymes in cards to send to loved ones.  This is a far cry from the words that flow from the very talented pens of the likes of Robert Frost, Sylvia Plath or Rudyard Kipling. Yet, so many people I know do not want to read poetry that hurts their brain and takes them about an hour to figure out what it was about. Most people I know want instant gratification from what they read: Ah, I feel better. That was nice. Oh, I really relate to that, etc.


And a lot of these people are intelligent, with degrees (although not necessarily in English). I guess they just don't think the same way as what The Poetry Society would consider to be a good poem.

That makes sense. I also like to understand a piece of art. I like Salvador Dali, but that's because I understand it despite its weirdness. Show me abstract art by Osnat Tzadok and I'm thinking, 'beautiful, but I don't know what it is unless I see the title (and even then not always!).' It doesn't make it a bad painting, but I would never buy it....


So are good poems the ones that are technically brilliant and of Poetry Society standard, even if most people wouldn't buy it, or are good poems easy-to-read-and-understand greeting card standard that most people would buy?  Would love to hear your thoughts!


I feel that my poems fall somewhere between the two. I have written greeting card type poems which usually get quite good ratings on open sites and forums where the visitors are usually the general public as opposed to 'poets'. And I've written a few that I suppose would be considered more freestyle, as opposed to the 'boom-di-boom-di-boom-di-boom' of iambic pentameter.  I think they're technically well formatted in meter and rhyme, if the rhyme is applicable, but people don't really seem to like them as much, maybe because it doesn't flow as easily as 'boom-di-boom-di-boom-di-boom'.


If I want to make money from writing poetry, do I actually have to 'sell-out' a little and write easy-to-read-and-say, with words that everyone's heard of?


Hmmmmm......