What Makes a Good Poem?

by Hermione Byron @hermionebyron

To me, poetry appears like light: a sun-like zap, a star-like burst. It comes in images of light, and feelings of joy. Stripped back a poem is simply ‘a sequence of words’, a ‘conscious construction of an apprehensible world’. What, then distinguishes a poem from a shopping list? What elevates words from their ordinary use and casts them under the spell of the poem?

The various names of different poetic forms sound themselves like incantations…

Villanelle                                  sonnet

                          acrostic                                          haiku    

           limerick                       ode

And the act of forming a poem is a kind of magic. Putting pen to paper is a conscious process, something sacred in this internet age; writing a letter has become a gentle distillation of time and place in an extraordinarily hectic world. Writing words down is an attempt to preserve and dedicate something personal to society. Words have greater power when they are used with intent, but still, what exactly is it about them that stains our memory, and leaves us glowing with second-hand sensations?

Poetic intention can be expressed in myriad ways: rhyme, rhythm, emotional catharsis, political purpose. It can materialize in the poem’s structure or through the message it conveys, and sometimes even both. In William Blake’s politically charged, London, its rhyme and rhythm creates a sense of asphyxiation that is paralleled in the central message: a prophetic complaint about Industrial society in 1794.

‘I wander thro’ each charter’d street,

Near where the charter’d Thames does flow.

And mark in every face I meet

Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every Man,

In every Infants cry of fear,

In every voice: in every ban,

The mind-forg’d manacles I hear’.

The repetitions (e.g. of ‘every’) mimic the grind of working conditions. This forms a sort of echo to strengthen the image of the chains (‘manacles’) which Man finds himself in. Blake’s poem speaks the truth of a bourgeoning nightmare, before it has managed to become reality. London resonates because it intends to wake us up to the desperate politics of its time. His intention fuels the poem’s mastery. To read it is a bash to your bones, with lasting quakes of terror. A poem is not always easy reading, but a good one lasts in your mind.

Nevertheless, there are limits to the power of poetry. Anne Sexton’s, Words, warns the reader to ‘be careful of words, even the miraculous ones’:

‘(Words) They are doves falling out of the ceiling. They are six holy oranges sitting in my lap.

They are the trees, the legs of Summer, the sun’.

Yet, Sexton repeats, ‘words aren’t good enough’. Writing is merely an attempt to define. It is a torchlight in a void. Sexton suggests that the words left unwritten are equally part of the poem, because they form the background in which the poem grounds itself. Sexton’s poetic intention seems simple here. She proves the power of writing to set the imagination aflame, whilst acknowledging its limits:

‘Sometimes I fly like an eagle, but with the wings of a wren’.

What makes Words a great poem is how it transcends everyday language and pierces to the heart of our humanity. It stands as a monument for writing as an expression of life: both a struggle and a luxury.

As an avid reader and writer, I constantly find myself drawn to the world of poetry. Like a moth to a flame, poetry has a magnetism that always offers me something new: a different perspective, a deeper emotion, a slice of knowledge. I think that a good poem should acquaint the reader with the familiar whilst shining new light from its pages.

These are the poems that stand the test of time.