Poetry has been around since the beginning of time. I doubt that poets in primitive societies were overly concerned with whether their poems were considered academically accepted. They just versified. According to Judson Jerome in Poet’s Handbook, “Anyone can make poetry—and most people do, at least sometimes in their lives. They don’t even have to be able to read and write.”

That said there are certain trends in poetry that we tend to follow. When most Behind the Stacks participant...
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