Some years ago, a poet and colleague where I was teaching discussed the problem of a poet taking an image or phrase from another poet's work without permission and acknowledgment and incorporating it into one's own poem. He described it as "a stupid way to work." A poem works best when the images arise in the process of creating the poem, an organic process. A poem in which such an image or phrase appears, in my judgment, would violate creative integrity, and appearing in another poet's work might be jarring.

In America at the present time, the audience for poetry in the general population is astonishingly small. I recently experienced this when confronting a group at a reading who revealed they did not read poetry. I assumed they have no idea what a good poem is. The audience was mainly elderly, the ages ranging from the late 50s to the 90s. The deprivation for these readers of the insight and truth in a good poem is saddening. They might find a correlation between their own experiences and the revelation in the poem.

In these times of uncertainty, confusion, and rumors of alternative facts, the certainty that a poem works only if true to the experience it renders as a  whole makes a poem a significant source of satisfaction. 

At a recent poetry discussion, the subject came up of great poets. Who are they? W.B. Yeats was mentioned right away. Perhaps a more interesting question is that of great poems. A poet may not be considered great in the light of the body of work, but may have written several great poems. For example, Dylan Thomas may not be judged a major great poet, but his poems "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night"and "Refusal to Mourn the Death of a Child, by Fire, of a Child in London" are great poems.

In addition to bringing forth an experience in a poem, a person's life can be celebrated, a poem a tribute to that life. Such poems acknowledge the value of a life to the poet, as well as the distinction of that life itself. Poems in honor of a person arise from deep feeling, generally a feeling long held, in which some quality is brought out that distinguishes the person. Recently, I have been working on a poem about my grandmother, born in the nineteenth century, whose life had many challenges as well as many joys in her own family. I knew her when I was in school, and I believe we came to a better understanding of our lives and our remarkable friendship.

At the start of the New Year, poetry continues to engage opinion as to its worth and function in a challenging and changing environment. In the January 1, 2017, New York Times Book Review essay, "A Few Questions for Poetry, Daniel Halpern states that "the issue is larger than the number of poetry collections sold each year." He quotes the poet W.S. Merwin's view that poetry comes closer than any other art form to expressing what cannot be said. "Language itself is at the heart of our experience as human beings. Poetry sustains us. As for a more negative stance, William Logan, in his review of Marie Ponset's Collected Poems (NYT, September 2016), asserts that "poets usually begin by writing loads of rubbish, and a few ever write anything else." Grudgingly he praises Ponset's mature work, finding her undervalued. "We read such poets," he says, "to know how a poetic intelligence inhabits the world." Yet even the requirements of composing good work are open to consideration. The January-February 2017 issue of Poets & Writers features an article on the new Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden, which brings out that the present laureate Juan Felipe Herrara wants poetry to be more spontaneous, no revision!

A good poem transcends its story.  It's not enough to tell what happened and "tell it true."  The poem should evoke a feeling, something the  poet experienced and is not sayable, the reader comprehends.

In his book The Hatred of Poetry, Max Lerner explores the aversion to this art even by poets, Marianne Moore saying, "I too dislike it." He asserts that the ambition for a poem is not realistic. Responding to an interviewer in the Paris Review (June 2016), he discusses the reaction of readers: "The non-poet is still haunted by the idea that you're a poet by virtue of being human," adding "to say you're a poet is to say you're more human than they are." My hope for my poems is that they can activate a meaning for the reader through the mystery of language not possible in prose, perhaps even a redemptive experience.

Some readers complain that much published poetry, though well crafted, is similar to too many others that they have read. The poems have no individual voice. The promising early work of poets, as has been noted, will have a distinctive voice, such as the poems of Robert Lowell, Theodore Rhoethke, and Phillip Larkin. A poet's voice should be unique, so an unfamiliar poem can be recognizable, will have the sound of that poet's voice in known poems.