Knowing what is good poetry is hard though
to know what is bad is easy, some will debate
this. I pose the book length poems great and
tenured poets seem to think are necessary
often fall
very short of great even if one gets all the all-
usions(Donald Hall’s, The One Day is not one of
these poems).Poems are not good because they
are erudite, they are not bad because they rhyme
or are free
verse, are about love or death, though these are
weary topics, surely. Some great poems are
mystical, some are not. Yehuda Amichias’ poem
The Diameter of a Bomb, for example-
all fact.
The muse was strident in her pleas that day.
I am unapologetically sexist in my belief the
muse is she. I could care less about what god is.
All I need
to make me believe is your hand In hers as she
whispers to me.

© 2013 Abby Smith, Writer