What Happened to Poetry?

I have found in my search for poetry, that mostly I come up with teenage angst and blatant stories. What happened to implying but letting someone else interpret? What happened to poetry like: "O Captain! my Captain!" by Walt Whitman? Although "O Captain! my Captain!" may seem like a poem about a captain on a ship, it's not. It is about his father. It seems like all the mystery of poetry has been yanked out with punk music and step-by-step poetry lessons. Poetry comes from the heart, not from a lesson on how to be mediocre at it.

What has happened to the LOOOOONG metaphors and similes placed in poems that would tie it all together in the end, with an awe inspiring twist! Emily Dickinson's "Fame is a fickle food" is a great example. Today poetry seems to be filled with: "I am mad, and that makes me sad, and sometimes I'm happy, and I like to take a nappy". Do not force poetry, for it does come to you. When I read poems with stanzas such as:

"My life's not the same
You came home the same old man
And from the way you act
You don't give a d*mn"

I want to cry for poetry. I want to hold it tight and tell it that although I am not the best poet, I will try to keep it safe and always a treasure. When people read a poem, they should not sit there and say,"Well it is about a man and he is hurting his family and she is really mad about it". They should be saying,"What I THINK is that this is about death and fear", or something equally close to impossible to interpret in the exact right way.

Poetry is in a trough right now and there is no where to go but up, yet we still seem to be trying to dig deeper. Cherish the poems of yesterday, and apply the styles to today. Do not come out and tell people what the poem is about, and do not make the poem so easy to decipher that it is uninteresting.

Apply the styles of other poets to your writing, and soon you will begin to develop your own style. Stay true to poetry. If you wish to come right out and say what you are feeling, then I suggest songwriting. I am not saying that people should not write poetry. I am saying that if you wish to excel in writing poetry, become the pen that strokes the paper. Imagine yourself as Edgar Allen Poe while writing The Raven or something equally important. Imagine yourself as a poor poet in England, like William Shakespeare, writing sonnets to almost every woman that he met! Imagine them in you, because they are. When you write poetry, the poems as well as the poets become a part of you, and from their knowledge and your application, your style will emerge. Also, of course, Practice, edit, practice, edit, practice, practice. Although a passionately written poem may brew fire in people for a while, it will fizzle at some point. It is the carefully thought out and perfected poems that ring in our hearts forever.

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