I don’t understand poetry…

…nor art, but that’s another story.

Consider the following poem. Before you proceed to read the rest of the post, please judge the poem. Is it good? Terrible? Something average? I honestly don’t know.

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Humanness encompasses trust.
Ascribing credence to souls,
By choice, or by circumstance.
How strong is your faith?
Very high? Nothing at all?

Would you rather trust
Your best friend? Your love?
Would you rather trust
An unknown?
Friendship, closeness, en garde?

Firmness of trust depends not On what you see or guess,
But what you feel and know.
Like the depth of an old tree’s roots.
Standing steadfast, as time hustles through.

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What makes a poem good? I've often wondered about it. Gone are the kiddie days when good rhyming made a good poem. It’s much more than that now.

Discussing this with friends who study English literature/poetry, I found one common theme — that it is open to interpretation. Good metaphors, examples, simplicity, etc. help.

In my opinion, it is something like modern art, where you either get or you don’t (I don’t). And there is an uncomfortable fake appreciation which is common among folks who didn't understand it, but want to appear scholarly. So, here’s me admitting unashamedly that I’m not a poetic scholar, and nor do I want to appear scholarly. But I want to create a poem from the way I see poems, and I’d appreciate those who understand poetry to identify the positives in my poem (if any), and the negatives!

From what I've seen and read growing up, traditional poetry had structure, for e.g., Lines 1,2,5 and 3,4 as in limerick, fixed number of syllables per line, as in a 5-7-5 haiku, and so on. But many modern poems seem to have none of these, no rhyming, nor fixed lengths of lines. Nothing. At least, nothing that my non-poetic brain sees. A quick look at various poetry/writing sites confirms this for many high-rated poems.

In fact, much looks like prose. With a few “poetic words” in place of regular words, and with a deeper meaning.

So, let’s try to define an algorithm to make a poem. And we’ll generate one through the algorithm. The experts will immediately realise that “poems” generated thus are rubbish.

But, jokes apart, I don’t mean to offend poetry lovers with this process. If you are an expert, please do tell me what exactly made this particular poem good, mediocre or rubbish.

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Algorithm:

Step 1: Get a theme, with some event and a comparison or two. As in my old Analogies post (please excuse the self-reference, but this post is a continuation along the same theme), it is well worth having an everyday example and something deep. We pick the first “quote” from there for our example.

Example: Trust is like a tree. It’s strength depends on its roots.

Step 2: Expand on it for a few lines.

Example: In life, we find out that we have to trust many people, sometimes by choice, and sometimes we are forced to. For example, you probably trust your close friend or significant other much other than some unknown person with whom you are likely to be on your guard. Why? Because of how well and long you've known them. But the strength of the trust depends on the basis of trust. Like the depth of the roots of a tree that has been around for a while.

Step 3: Add a few adjectives. Choose “classy” synonyms of words. Write does not depend as depends not, change It is to ‘Tis, Unbeknown to Unbeknownst, etc. Split the text into a few parts. (In our example, separated by “/”)

Example: Humanness envelops trust. Ascribing credence to souls, by choice, or by circumstance. How strong is your faith? Very high? Nothing at all? / Would you rather trust your best friend? Your love? Would you rather trust an unknown? Friendship, closeness, en garde? / Firmness of trust depends not on what you see or guess, but what you feel and know. Like the depth of an old tree’s roots. Standing steadfast, as time hustles through.

Step 4: Break each of the above parts into arbitrary lengths. Do not change any text. Capitalize the first letters in each line. This completes the algorithm. An algorithmically generated poem that we began with! Voila!

Example:

Humanness encompasses trust.
Ascribing credence to souls,
By choice, or by circumstance.
How strong is your faith?
Very high? Nothing at all?

Would you rather trust
your best friend? Your love?
Would you rather trust
An unknown?
Friendship, closeness, en garde?

Firmness of trust depends not
On what you see or guess,
But what you feel and know.
Like the depth of an old tree’s roots.
Standing steadfast, as time hustles through.