How to Critique Poetry?
There are a lot of ways to critique a poem, but here is a decent guideline:
This is based on the idea that every poem has something (or some one thing) good about it. Still pointing out what might be wrong with it, or what you think they could do to make it even better.
Try to be analytical and control your emotions in order to give an objective view.
Quote:
---Read the poem and figure out what the objective or universal message is. Poetry that only connects to the writer is of little importance to others unless they can, at the very least see themselves in the poem.
If a poem has a universal or big subject message, it is bound to appeal to your emotions, or mind, or both.
---Look for metaphors and similes. Imagery must be there to make it poetry.
---Structure: Structure means stanza, line breaks, sentence lengths, capitalization, punctuation, couplets, quatrains, forms like Sonnets, Haiku, etc.
A poem always has structure. If a poem had no structure, it couldn't exist. Poets who think they are writing without structure don't understand what structure means. Free verse means the poet makes up their own form or structure.
---Word choice: Great words add to a great poem. Sometimes there is simply a word that could be replaced to make the poem feel a certain way. Sometimes a poem can have too many words when it could still convey the same universal message with less.
---Meter. Sometimes people focus so much time and trouble thinking how to measure and mix the metered words that the poem ends up being without a message. Meter is based on the flow of sentence, syllable count and stressed and unstressed parts of the words in the sentence. Whether a sentence stumbles or floats upon the tongue when reading it silently or out loud. A free verse poem has its own Meter.
---You could recommend to the poet a book or poem relating to what she has written on or about or in that style.
---You could take a poem and examine it line by line and point out better words, cliches, weak verbs or better nouns.
---A decent critique is always better than the best friendly sentiments.
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-Anyone have any comments or anything to add?
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