My premise is that poetry stands clear of the other art forms in that it is nearly always embarrassing.
A thought experiment: Which would you prefer somebody to show you, asking for your opinion, watching for your response: a painting or a poem?
Which would you rather somebody did in front of you? Played you a tune he wrote on the piano, or recited one of his poems?
Gave you a present of a ceramic pot she had made, or a slim volume of her own verses?
Now, I am talking here of would-be serious poetry - my point does not apply to light verse or to comic verse (and also to 'poetry in translation'); which are very different in both intent and effect.
But you may well agree that there is something especially excruciating about nearly-all poetry.
Or, to phrase it differently:
1. There is extremely little real poetry, it is always culturally rare and often absent altogether; and
2. Real poetry is qualitatively different from the mass of what might be termed failed-poetry.
Most art forms have a much higher proportion of successes than does poetry, and a gradation of successes - so that it is far likelier that you will get some genuine enjoyment from somebody's sub-optimal sculpture, acting, novel-writing, musical composition... or almost anything; than from their failed poetry.
In brief: almost all attempts to write poetry fail; and failed poetry is not enjoyable.
Indeed, there is something actively unpleasant about failed poetry, something that grates and embarrasses.
Why? Well, often it is self-revelatory in ways that are embarrassing; often it tells you things about the would-be poet that, quite honestly, you would rather not know!
Failed poetry is either pretentious or bathetic in ways that often reveal that desperate craving for a kind of status which characteristically evokes a painful mixture of pity and disdain - emotions we would rather not be forced to feel.
It is a bit like catching someone in a lie; but they don't realize it - and just keep-on lying, eagerly expecting you to go along with the lie.
So many have tried and failed to be poets (and this includes nearly-all professional and 'recognized' poets) - that this whole area is one fraught with embarrassment.
(Not many memories are so embarrassing to me as my own attempts at poetry, and realizing retrospectively how excruciating they must have been to other people!)
To try and fail at something so incredibly difficult as real poetry is no disgrace!
Yet, it seems most are unable to learn from their own experiences; most are extremely resistant to the fact of their own failure - and although they can easily see the embarrassing failures of others; somehow continue kidding themselves that they-themselves are real poets - because of some external validation, or because they so much want to be a poet.
Why this should be, I don't know; because even real poets write very few poems, sometimes just one poem. And having written one, or three, or thirty real poems clearly does not positively transform a person's life - and may even go totally unrecognized.
All that can be boasted is: I have written a poem, a real poem.
After all; 'Anon' has probably written more great poems than anyone else in history - including Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and The Border Widow's Lament.
