Modern poetry in common man understanding has the unfortunate reputation of being difficult, as in “I have talked to multiple brilliant graduate degree holders in English having good IQ level and they still don’t get it.” Some poet’s writing, very few can understand while some, no one can read. But that’s not all to modern poetry, in fact, there are many poets who combine technical skill, formal experimentation, and scholarly learning with accessibility and character!

Every poet lives and writes at the frontier between deep internal experience and the revelations of the outer world. “Poetry is just the evidence of life,” it’s so said. “If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash out of it.” You don’t need an advanced degree to reap the rewards of a rich poetic life writing poetry is within the reach of everyone.

Life just seems so full of connections while poetry is the reflection of the imagination and conscious. Most of the time we don’t even pay attention to the depth of life. We only see flat surfaces.

 

 If you can keep your head high, your life through
While others are losing it and blaming it onto you
If you can trust yourself when all others doubt you
But able to make allowance for their doubting too
If you can wait patiently and not be tired by waiting
Or, being lied about ever and never deal in lies
Or being negative and hated, don’t give way to hating
And yet you will look good and will talk too wise
If you can dream and not make dreams your master
If you can think and not make thoughts your aim
If you can hands on with triumph and disaster
And treat those two ugly impostors just the same
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a tangling trap for fools
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken
And stoop and build’em up with worn out tools
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue
Or walk with the kings yet not lose the common touch
If neither foes nor loving friends really can hurt you
If everyone count with you, yet no one just too much
If you can truly fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds worth of dramatic distance run
Yours is the lovely earth and everything that’s in it
What you can ask more, you’re the center like the sun

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There is no going back once such frontier has been reached, a new territory is visible and what has been said cannot be unsaid. The discipline of poetry is in overhearing yourself say difficult truths from which it is impossible to retreat.

Poetry is a break for freedom. In a sense all poems are good, all poems are an emblem of courage and the attempt to say the unsayable; but only a few are able to speak to something universal yet personal and distinct at the same time. Poems create a door through which others can walk into what previously seemed unobtainable realms, in the passage of a few short lines.