The award of a pure gold medal for poetry would flatter the recipient unduly: no poem ever attains such carat purity.
Reading one's own poems aloud is letting the cat out of the bag. You may have always suspected bits of a poem to be overweighted, overviolent, or daft, and then, suddenly, with the poet's tongue around them, your suspicion is made certain.
Versification is, indeed, indispensable for music, but rhyme, solely for rhyming's sake, most pernicious.
I'm fighting against the bad poet who is prone to using too many words.
Shakespeare never had six lines together without a fault. Perhaps you may find seven, but this does not refute my general assertion.
Many a poem is marred by a superfluous verse.
As some to church repair, Not for the doctrine, but the music there. These equal syllables alone require, Though oft the ear the open vowels tire While expletives their feeble aid do join, And ten low words oft creep in one dull line.
