There are specific reasons why certain poems do not suck. However, it can be difficult (unless you are an expert on the subject or pretending to be) to identify these, as they often change depending on the poem.

This assertion makes sense.

“Locking Yourself Out, Then Trying To Get Back In” by Raymond Carver does not suck. Being in the second person, rather than sounding whiny or accusative as is often the case in these matters, makes it familiar. The poem seems to be a story related to you by a friend. “You know how it is,” the poem says. “You simply go out and shut the door / without thinking.”

“Oh sure. Been there,” you say.

When the poem’s speaker looks in at his room and talks to inanimate objects, it is charming. (Because everyone speaks to inanimate objects whether one admits to it or not. Familiarity!) But most of all, there's a dry description of the scene and of the speaker’s efforts to re-enter, mixed with sudden insights into the speaker’s thoughts, which pushes the poem beyond not sucking to being quite good. In fact, the complete normal every-day-ness of the descriptions is what make the poem stick with you. Several simple lines stand out in the poem as if they were bolded. "This is not like downstairs, I thought."

In a few days these lines will come back at a different angle and you will see that hidden behind the phrases that seemed so familiar is an entire other level, and perhaps another behind that one. Though in high school we all hated trying to find the symbolism behind the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg, nowadays we can all appreciate a good bit of nuance, particularly if no one is grading us on how quickly we figure it out.

Luckily, even with the multiple levels in this poem, Carver is not a poet for the pretentious, which means he and I are quite a good fit.

If you go here, you can not only read but also listen to the poem.

Excerpt:

You simply go out and shut the door
without thinking. And when you look back
at what you’ve done
it’s too late. If this sounds
like the story of a life, okay.

Why bother pointing out poetry that doesn't suck? you ask. Can't people do that themselves? Who are you to say this poem doesn't suck, and what if someone disagrees with you?

Well, imaginary reader, I am a former English major. Along with the superpowers, fame, and wealth that this brings, it means I've had to read a lot of poetry, amateur and professional. In the long run, this may mean nothing, but for now it means that I have opinions, including the belief that 90% of all writing is terrible. Possibly more! I haven't read all of the blogs on the web yet, so I can't be sure.

As to your second point, well, yes. They could. But people are lazy, myself included. I wager that most people stopped reading poetry long before they finished their last literature class. Surely it is a public service to point out the poems that are worth reading? Perhaps a few more people will come to have a favorite poem that didn't come from a chain email or Hallmark card. It is too much to hope that people will stop e-mailing each other cliches or moralizing rubbish disguised as free verse, I know, but I have my optimistic moments.

And finally, what do I care? Disagree all you like. I like a good disagreement once in a while.

That said:

The most obvious reason the poems that I plan to feature do not suck is that they were written by good writers. This is to say that the writers are not self-obsessed whiners who just got dumped and need to express their pain. There is nothing wrong with expressing extreme emotions, but as a general rule one should not do so for public consumption, particularly in any sort of verse, or without running a good spell-checker.

To be fair, some of the good poets may well be whiners, and all of them are likely self-obsessed (as is the nature of the scribus poeticus in its native habitat) but rather than harp on about this in verse form, they allow the importance of the words themselves to supersede the need for the poet to be the center of attention.

The inability to do this is why most poets remain amateurs.

Please stay tuned for our first poem, after a short commercial break. As an enticing preview, I will let slip that the writer will either be Raymond Carver or D. H. Lawrence.