What makes a poem good?

 I'm not certain that I would agree that "meaning" is what's important. After all "Jabberwocky"'s meaning is not clear - and isn't supposed to be. However, we can say what it is "about". It's about silliness and nonsense. That's what it communicates, and it does it well. It also tells us about the characteristics of poems that we recognize.

I've taken a lot of heat by well-educated writers over my declaration that poems should communicate. I find it ironic - poems "should merely be" said Archibald McLeish, and poems need not communicate anything, and yet...these same poets go to great lengths to get their works read by others, and read aloud at poetry meetings, and try to get them published so thousands of others will read their words...but supposedly communicating is not important in poetry.

This is the reason that I'm so insistant that a reasonably adept reader should be able to tell what a poem is 'about', even if looking up a few words is required. If a person wants to be cryptic, let him write in cyphers that require a secret decoder ring, but don't waste my time.

Alcuin