How do you tell good from bad poetry?

>The taste of the apple lies in the contact of the fruit with the palate, not in the fruit itself; in a similar way, poetry lies in the meeting of poem and reader, not in the lines of symbols printed on the pages of a book. What is essential is the aesthetic act, the thrill, the almost physical emotion that comes with each reading.

>this is what /mu/ believes

Next you're going to tell my Dylan deserved the Nobel

youtube.com/watch?v=hD9pJzZ1XGI
What about rap like this? There's rhythm and it's not trite lyrics-wise.

I can go a step further than any /mu/ person would and say that rap is the evolution of poetry. Poetry is musical, it has a rhythm, and having someone with a nice voice sonically interpret it for you is better than reading lines on a page, sounding it out in your head. I even think poetry is kind of retarded compared to rap, at least in this aspect, but what would fags know about this?

I love TV so this sounds pretentious to me. It also pales drastically in comparison to any great rapper's feats. Listen to "Like a Toy Soldier" by Eminem for something awesome that approaches depth, I suppose, but still not quite there yet. Also note that I dislike having to tell people what to think, so if you like this song my attitude to that is do you, but you asked for my advice so there it is.

bad poetry makes me imagine the author sitting in starbucks drinking a grande frappe, flipping back and forth between TextEdit and twitter. good poetry makes me imagine the author writhing in bed in the middle of the night, waking with a jolt and rushing to their writing desk

>having someone with a nice voice sonically interpret it for you is better than reading lines on a page, sounding it out in your head
jesus christ

There are like maybe five consistently good poets: Shakespear, Milton, Rilke, Eliot, Dante.

Then there are about 100 poets who have managed a good poem. 1000 perhaps who have managed a good line or stanza--like this is where most of the Greeks fall.

Rap comes off very well cause the beat realizes the ictic and the sample/s loop/s inform/s the metrical divisor.

What is a "metrical divisor"?

Rap plays the game of poetic ethos better than any poets ever have. Every talent has constructed a slightly ironic identity around their talent--even pop rappers like eminem shift their talent between three or four identities.

Rap also comes informed with its own sense of its mythic history and an esoteric vocabulary and pattern of invocations used to buy credibility for its ethea. It plays the game of poetry better than poetry does.

There's no such thing as bad or good poetry. There's poems that risk something just by existing, and those that doesn't. That said, it doesn't mean all poetry should be "original", because that's simply impossible (there's nothing completely original anyway). The point about poetry is that it experiments, tests stuff without fear and tries to connect with other people's imagination. In that sense, all art is experimental, and the more it defies its own definition, the more it comes closer to be meaningful.

the number of metrical feet per line, or the sum of feet in a sequence of metrical lines divided by the number of lines in the sequence

Hmm. Hard for me to tell because I'm not music theory inclined, but I know rappers try to be "on beat" and I suppose that could enhance the final product as opposed to just being an impediment if not done.

>Rap plays the game of poetic ethos better than any poets ever have.
There is no such thing as the "game of poetic ethos". I have no idea what you are talking about.

Are you trying to say rap is better than poetry because rappers are good at constructing personas of themselves? That's a function of the age of mass media and celebrity and has zero to do with poetry as an artform.

wtf dude. both of those visions are fucking cliches. i would almost cringe as much at the second one.

i bet you most great lines of poetry were written in a state of serious workmanlike focus, not in inspired middle-of-the-night frenzies. not to say that inspiration isn't required by the workman like focus method, but you get my point.

I listen to what all other people are saying because I am typical Veeky Forums idiot who doesnt really have a clue about poetry

Imagine that you're painting a house. You've painted the exterior of the house. It looks like shit. You've missed shingles. You didn't finish certain areas. You neglected to touch upon areas that needed more attention. This is the aesthetic quality of poetry. Now, you walk inside the house. You examine the colors that you've chosen for the rooms. Are they pleasant? What kind of moods do they invoke? Did you do a proficient job there? What will someone think of the inside after looking at the slackjawed presentation of the exterior? This is content.

Aesthetics/content

Very essentialized explanation. I only took a semester on poetry and read prose in spare time. But, you have to think in those terms. When people say, "[the quality of] art is subjective," it's because they don't know shit about art or are trolling in the most excessive fashion. A genre is subjective, but quality and substance are universally respected. Buy an elementary book on poetry if you want to know the typology and elements to look for in measuring a poem, but know that it is a very lonely and neglected craft if you want to be a poet.

Rap, on the other hand, is fucking easy.
Exhibit A: soundcloud.com/bryce-clark-296861100/scratch
I wrote this shit and recorded in less than two hours.

It was written is almost on par with illmatic.

It has to be meaningful to the reader. You cant just read something you dont care about, you wont like it. I enjoy this song/album. Its basically poetry about the story of a man on a quest
youtube.com/watch?v=0DcO5XM6-pU

i think we should stop with this meme. you probably read blake or stevens and think that no one else matters

rate my stuff

lol, you are like a little babby, watch this