The difference between good poems and great poems

catwoodward

Sep 15

7 min read

What to do to make your own poetry go from good to great.

I read an awful lot of poems, poems from my mentees, poems I sift for competitions, and of course the poems I read for pleasure too. I encounter many good poems, well-written, effectively structured poems with solid images, lucid, mature poems, with lots of human interest, polished to a high sheen by the editing process. I read them, I think ‘that’s good’, then I forget about them and, as usually is the case, never read them again. The defining feature of a good poem is that there’s nothing wrong with it, but that’s not saying much. It takes something more for a poem to be memorable or to truly make an impact on the reader. That’s what great poems do.

There are many good poems, there are far fewer great poems. A great poem is more than just good. After reading a truly great poem, nothing feels quite the same ever again, something about the world, or something inside the reader has changed. After I read a great poem I feel dazed, because I’ve just been brushed by something alive, awake, and vital as it passed. I want to read it again right away, and I find myself coming back to it again and again over the years. I’m never finished with it. Such is the charisma of a great poem, but good poems rarely have that kind of effect.

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As a case in point, many of the poetry collections that win major prizes are judged ‘good’ at the time, but after the initial bustle has died down, most are forgotten. I remember buying Andrew McMillan’s Physical when it was all the rage after winning the inaugural Guardian First Book Award and several other major prizes in 2015. It was fine. A year later, I couldn’t give it away on We Buy Books, it had become completely worthless. Later, in 2023, Jason Allen-Paisant won The Forward Prize for Self Portrait as Othello, and the title was everywhere. In 2024, it turned up on the office book swap shelf at work, next to old manuals on cake decorating and out-of-date exhibition catalogues. No one read it.

So how do you go from good to great? Below are some things which, to me as I think on it now, distinguish great poems from good:

Dare to do the unexpected or unconventional

Good poems tend to sound like other good poems, and do the same things that other good poems do, because that’s good, right? Yes it is, but while conventionality and conservatism can make a poem ‘good’, they can also make a poem predictable, unexciting, and undistinctive. The bar gets raised when the poem does something I didn’t expect, something actually surprising, different or risky. The audacity it takes to do such a thing is charismatic in itself, but beyond that, daring opens the door to originality. When a poet does something really different, they’ve given themselves the opportunity to put more of their unique self in the poem, and if the poet is especially visionary, they may even have moved the art of poetry along a bit by doing it. That’s great.

Achieve technical mastery

Having said that, the basis of successful daring is technical mastery. In order to depart from convention, a poet has to know the conventions inside and out, and they have to fully understand what it takes to successfully break with convention. Different for different’s sake is never enough. In the same way, Pablo Picasso was famously a master of traditional figure drawing and portraiture before he invented Cubism. Great poems often shine out because the poet has made it abundantly clear that they really know their stuff when it comes to technique and poetics. There’s nothing quite like watching a master at work.

Extend beyond the personal, topical or particular

Let me get something straight first: there’s nothing wrong with personal or topical poetry. The point I’m making here is that, to be great, a poem finds a way to both encompass and reach beyond its immediate topic. A great poem will not go out of date when its topic falls out of vogue, because it speaks to something more than just that topic, and its ambitions extend beyond the poem’s immediate reception, or the poet’s gratification, in the present. Great poets often have a timeless mentality. What that ‘more’ is though, is various and tricky to place. That’s something you will have to discover for yourself.

Draw deeply on literary tradition...

I can’t emphasise this one enough; this is the lesson that every poet must learn if they're serious about writing. The greatest poems make it clear that they're standing on the shoulders of giants; this is where they derive their most brilliant originality from. Beginner poets especially can feel pressure to make their work completely new; to be original and to stand out they feel they need to break from the past and reinvent the wheel. But that's an unfortunate misconception, and it leads to limp, unoriginal, rootless poems. Read the great poetry of the past (both the distant past and the near), learn how it has influenced the poetry of today, be inspired by it, use it, build on it, let it enrich your practice. Nothing is out of date; all poems belong on the long, unbroken line of literary tradition, stretching back and reaching forward.

...but also look to the future

Which brings me on to my next point. A second, opposite misconception that beginner poets especially can have, is this: to be great I must imitate the great and repeat only what has worked. Having a firm connection to literary tradition is only useful to practicing poets in so far as that connection helps them to move the state of the art forward. Poetry isn't supposed to remain static, it's never 'finished'. Great poems use their strong roots in the tradition to innovate (whether that innovation be little or large). Great poems tend to bring something new to the table, and a great poet adds something of themselves to the wider field of poetics. With a firm link to the past, you will better know how to move forward.

Use a distinctive voice

The importance of voice is not to be understated here. If I had to locate the 'source' of greatness in a great poem (if that's not too silly a suggestion), I'd locate it in the voice. Rarely is greatness about what a poet says, it's always about how they say it. Great poems aren't necessarily about 'great' subjects – war, love, grief or whatever – a great poem could be about a teaspoon and still be great. To write great poems you don't have to chase the highest ideas or plumb the deepest depths, you need to cultivate a distinctive, compelling, unequivocally 'you' voice. With a voice like that, you can speak about anything and reveal its greatness. Of course, many great poems do expound great themes and subjects, but if it weren't for the great voice they use to expound them, the poem would ring hollow and thin no matter what it was about.

Apply Imagination

In my opinion, great poems privilege the imagination above all. Imagination is the root of all the best images and concepts in poetry. In coining an image or concept, a poet is imbuing the world with their unique vision; they imagine into the things of the world some special light of their own, and having done so, the reader may then see those things anew. A special aspect of those things is revealed to the reader for the first time, as it first appeared in the poet's imagination, and as it then took flight in the poem... I realise how mystical this sounds, but take me seriously. Good poems use apt images, images calculated to surprise or illicit a certain response, images that serve a purpose, and the concepts in good poems are clever in a novel, mildly entertaining sort of way, because they've been calculated to be that way. Imagination takes a back seat in good poems; it's a means to an end. In great poems, imagination is the end, and the poem is the means to project it.

Lastly, write about what you really want to write about...

...and not what you think you ought to write about to be great. If you just want to write about drinking a Coke, write about that. It was good enough for Frank O' Hara. Follow your heart, no subject is too big, small, strange, mundane, simple, complicated, conventional, unconventional etc., etc. Your genuine passion and fascination will carry over into whatever you write, and that will make the difference. So, follow where inspiration leads, trust it, even if it takes you somewhere doubtful or unexpected. Chances are that this uncharted path will take you beyond the predictable realms of the merely 'good', and it may even provide you with an opportunity to be great.

I've also made available a selection of my poetry-writing courses and writing prompts at The Poetry Master Class with Cat Woodward, where you're sure to find something to inspire you.

If you'd like to read some poems of my own, these days I publish all of my new work for free on my Substack, Solarion, along with criticism and some other bits.

CAT WOODWARD