Well, no. Greatness is determined by time. What outlasts the current time and speaks to the next generation, and the next, that is greatness. It doesn't stop it being greatness right now, though, if we recognize it.
Anyway, thank you for figuring out the problem with poetry today. You maybe made a small typo here - I think you meant to say, "MY problem with poetry today." Because this might be affecting slightly fewer people than you thought. Similarly, Unless something rhymes and has rhythm, it's not poetry - to you.
I don't think I've ever before read a piece where I disagreed with every statement. I think I even disagreed with the commas. By disagreed, I mean: felt that the statements, far from being controversial, are just ill-judged, uninformed, and factually wrong, just the incomprehension of a closed mind pretending to be criticism.
Sure, there's lots of modern poetry that's drivel. There's lots of traditional rhymed and metred poetry that's drivel, too.
Poetry has its own specific job to do, and it does it not in the way you prescribe, but in the way the poet has prescribed. It's not for you to say, "this is not a poem." Poets get to say that, not you. It's a poem because it's a poem. Criticism would concern itself with how effective the poem was, as itself, not with whether or not it followed some arbitrary form.
Everyone's entitled to their opinion, and often even an opinion like this, acknowledged as an opinion, would invite interesting and productive discussion. But to make your opinion the final word on the subject the way you have was actually quite insulting. It shows a kind of weird grandiosity and, honestly? Have a little humility - nowhere is there a sense that those nutty professors, even one of them, might know something you don't.
So we have "nonsense," "drivel," "pretentious professors" mindlessly repeating what they're told, English majors not the brightest sparks - and what a snide and gratuitous insult by the way.
Some of this is downright silly. For example: "Evoking emotion has nothing to do with the words you chose." Really? This sentence is actually nonsensical, but if you're trying to say that words can't evoke emotion - well, they can, and do, it's called "connotation". They can, and it matters, a lot, which word you choose.
Poetry isn't one specific form. It's a specific mode of literary expression.
Honestly, learn more about poetry. Read "Break, Blow, Burn," in which Camille Paglia close-reads 43 poems ranging from Shakespeare to the present . You will find it a revelation.
DR
