Poetry

Poetry, to me, is a means to communicate meaning in a way that is both symphonic and accessible. Poetry is written music, where within its words there is a sublime beat that permeates your being. It gives way to feeling that may be interpreted in so many various ways, that you and I, upon reading the same poem, may come to the conclusion that we both took individual feeling from the work.
I believe that for poetry to be able to preform such duties as mentioned as mentioned above, it has to be written with true feeling and true meaning intended. Synthetic emotion is easily found by readers and will severely damage the value of both the poem and of the author.
There are so many formats poetry may be written in. Of course, there is the traditional, and amateurish, ab,ab,ab,ab, but then there is also rhyme which is so much more complex, and I feel takes a larger form of ability and concentration to write. There is also free verse, which may have no rhymes at all, and I actually prefer those.
My favorite form of poetry is of the transcendentalist movement which includes some of my favorite poets: Whitman, Dickinson, and Emerson. Poetry here began to significantly deviate from the social norms, and the accepted topics of writing. I believe this movement carried to the contemporary poets of the 1960's and 70's which gave way to another author which I hold in high esteem, Anne Sexton. Her confessional form of poetry challenges us to examine controversial topics, but written in a way that makes them beautiful. And that is what I believe the role of the poet is, to glamorize the ugly, and to contradict and critique society's norms.