by Shelly Barclay

Created on: April 09, 2009   Last Updated: October 23, 2009

Poetry is a form of self-expression that has been used by artists since ancient times. Most poetry is an outpouring of sentiment, describing how the writer is feeling about a particular experience. A poem can also be an opinion or a story that the writer wishes to tell in poetic form. Poetry is an art-form and really can be used by the writer for whatever means they wish to achieve by writing a poem, but is the purpose of poetry better served by writing of an experience or about an opinion?

It is easy to love and understand a poem when it mirrors an experience in your own life. If you read a poem about an experience that you have had, do you not feel a connection? When a reader comes across a poem that they can relate to they may find a certain comfort in knowing that they are not the only person to have these feelings. A writer that is experiencing love will write about it with an energy that bespeaks the joy (or heartache) that they are feeling. Poetry about life's experiences give the reader a chance to feel what the writer has felt. A well written poem about love or friendship can become timeless because these experiences themselves have existed throughout the ages and will continue to exist down to the last human being on Earth. The joys and heartaches in life are things almost anyone can relate to. The poem that a reader will cherish and read again and again is the poem that reminds them of their own life.

You could say that most poetry is written about the writer's opinion or interpretation of their experiences and that would be true in a way. A simple sentence, such as "Our love is beautiful.", is really an expression of the writers opinion of their love for another, even though the statement may be based on their experience of love. However, poetry that is based on opinion without the experience is different than poetry written about experience. Poetry based strictly on opinion can be a useful way to get your point across or to vent your frustrations on a topic, but it may not have the same appeal to the reader.

I must say that it is a poets right to choose the subject of his or her work. A poem may turn out to be a beautiful piece of work no matter what it was based on. For myself I enjoy to read about moments in a writers life, the poetry I consider great is based on experience. One of the best known poems of all time O Captain! My Captain! by Walt Whitman is written metaphorically about Mr. Whitman's feelings about the tragic death of U.S. president Abraham Lincoln. O Captain! My Captain! is written by a writer who experienced the triumph and tragedy of a nation in turmoil. Poet Emily Dickinson's writings tell the story of her life and her depression, her work is truly a portrait of her own soul. Obviously Ms.Dickinson's experiences with her saddened mind have made her one of the most beloved poets of all time. The long lasting success of such writers as Dickinson and Whitman is a testament to the fact that if you want to be a great poet it would be safer to go with experience over opinion.

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