What makes Poetry Memorable?

    In my last blog post, I talked about the reasons for my general apathy towards poetry. However, as I was writing that post, I also realized that I don’t completely hate poetry as a whole. I just had some qualms with how poetry itself is looked at, but not the actual poetry itself. Of course, it does get a little bit annoying when analyzing deep poetry that has like 20 different meanings, but there have definitely been some poems that have stuck with me for a very long time. It really made me wonder, what makes certain poetry ‘memorable' and others not?

    Like anything to do with poetry and liking stuff, this discussion is highly subjective, and these are my opinions on what makes poetry good or not. My first thought went to the poems that try to have social commentary on a specific issue and try to go deeper in meaning. As I mentioned before though, these poems could become memorable for the wrong reasons, such as something that bored you so much that you remember negatively. I still think that there are some cases, such as “Caged Bird” by Maya Angelou, which have such an effect on social issues such as racial discrimination that they stand out from the rest. I find it extremely admirable when people use creative ways to demonstrate their logical reasoning to their advantage, which is what these poets like Angelou do best when writing some of their work. I have also found I like story-like poems that outline something relatable to the audience tend to be well-liked, perhaps for nostalgia or to share a common issue that multiple people face at on. 

    When I think about it more, some short and literal poems are also very critically acclaimed and memorable. Usually, there are some specific elements, such as humor, that play a big role in these types of poems. One of the best examples I've seen is from my classmate Alex Prater’s blog post from last week, where he made numerous fun haikus about random things such as pizza and so forth.  

    Overall, it’s hard to exactly specifically characterize what makes a poem good, especially when there are so many styles/categories of poetry with different elements that make them stand out from each other, such as comedy, conveying a significant message, or even both. Nonetheless, I think that this is the magic of poetry, as one is unable to fully divide each piece of literature into anyone’s set groups of other ‘similar’ poetry.