Simplicity in Poetry

[cvanshelton]

1. Always identify your audience.
2. Always write to your audience.
3. Always.

I heartily disagree with this.
Just write a great poem, the audience is of no consequence .

Then you have already identified your audience as yourself, and your opinion is the only one that matters. Pretty small world to live in, but if it works for you that's great.

---

A lot of poems may seem to use more words than necessary, often able to summarized in a brief sentence or two (see Leanne's example). 

Glad you see you changed your mind about that one!

I might have had to break you.

---

I heartily disagree with this.
Just write a great poem, the audience is of no consequence .

Respectfully (please don't beat me ), isn't this the same as saying that your ultimate audience is yourself? I don't mean that in a bad way, it just sounds like you've identified your audience. If you're not writing for anyone else, you're writing for yourself. I think this is noble, but I'm far too egotistical to not want accolades from the masses (said 75% tongue in cheek)!

I feel like it's kind of a tree falling in the forest and no one hearing it situation -- how do you know it's a great poem if no one else reads it?

I also heartily disagree with this. You write to create a poem. From there what happens, happens.
You would deliberately make a poem worse to pander to an audience?
Anyway, if you write a great poem the audience will find it.

Writing to a specific audience is not pandering, nor does it necessarily make a poem worse. There is no causal relationship there. Also, in writing, the formula of "if you build it, they will come" does not work. You have to do the work. You have to put your writing out there. The responsibility is on you to find your audience, not the other way around. But, one can only conclude from your previous responses, your audience seems to be yourself, so if that is the case, I suppose your audience did find you insofar as you have found yourself. Again, I don't have anything against that perspective as long as it works for you.