Critique of Meghan's Poem

Meghan’s Poem, Best Friend, is about a close friend of hers. It utilizes a rhyming scheme, but doesn’t stick to strict construction. The stanzas also become progressively shorter. Whether this is intentional or not is not clear. And it appears that the poem itself lends no double meaning. That is, the poem is straight forward and does not require a second look. This is simply about a good friend of Meghan’s.

This poem is straight forward, and while that makes it easy to understand its meaning, and it doesn’t ask much of the reader, it still doesn’t challenge the reader. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The poem does exactly what it should do, but once you read the poem, you don’t read it again. And this is solely because it doesn’t stand out from any other poem. And again, writing poetry does not require that a double meaning be present, nor does it require a challenge to unlock. But in poetry, from my perspective, there are two things that it should do. One of those things is challenge the reader, and the other is to paint a vivid picture for the reader. No vivid picture is painted for the reader; although, it appears in your poem that some specific memories are referenced. This does tug at the reader’s curiosity. Like, what happened? What things happened between you and your best friend? Or what happened to the both of you? These questions are never addressed, nor are they alluded to. So all in all, this poem does not challenge the reader or paint them a picture. The thing it might do well is engage the reader’s curiosity, but it never rewards that curiosity.