Before we get into tips for strengthening your poetry, let's talking about what poetry is (and what it isn't).
You may be thinking, "Oh, everybody knows what a poem is."
A year ago, I thought this too.
I was terribly wrong, and it was embarrassing. Sure, you may know a general idea of what a poem is and how to identify one, but there's a huge difference between good poetry and bad poetry.
The goal of a poem is to evoke emotion through imagery. Imagery is the most important element of a poem. If there is no imagery, it's not exactly a poem. At least, it's not going to be considered as a good poem.
Now that we know the purpose of a poem, let's cover the basics of what poetry isn't.
1) It's not a rant
You'll want to avoid ranting in your poems. This tends to take away your opportunity to add imagery, and if you're like me, you probably don't want to read a collection of rants.
2) It's not meant to educate/preach your views
Poetry that preaches certain views, often political, tends to turn readers away. It's okay to take a particular stance and have that show through in your poem, but similar to the first point, you don't want to turn it into a rant. It's best to stay neutral than to risk alienating your readers.
3) It's not easy
Many people tend to think that writing poetry is simple. You slap some words on the page, make them rhyme, add a few line and stanza breaks, then you have a poem, right?
Wrong.
Writing poetry is much more complex than writing prose. Short stories, novellas, novels--all of those focus more on the story itself instead of the word choice, rhythm, etc. When writing poetry, every single word, line break, stanza break, and any punctuation must have a purpose.
