For over a decade I chaired the poetry division in a well-run writing competition for poets and writers, and each year I noticed similar mistakes in poems that almost placed. Having learned from this recurring cycle of flaws and errors, I thought you might welcome the following list of things to avoid – not as you write, but as you revise.
• Expressing excessive sentimentality with such words as tears, heart, share, cry, and dear ole something or other
• Stating the obvious
• Writing lines that don't hum true
• Venting, arguing, and/or guilt-tripping readers
• Bad-mouthing any person or group
• Using punctuation like chicken pox
• Choosing fonts or colors that turn an editor’s eyes into disco balls
• Chatting without regarding potential readers
• Saying nothing fresh, insightful, imaginative, interesting, or new
• Including clichés that were imaginative a l-o-n-g time ago
• Using crude words, vulgar language, or other devices for shock value
• Emphasizing words that don't need to be noticed by rhyming end-lines – for instance, rhyming “the” and “me”
• Getting locked into end-line rhymes so strongly that syntax suffers, meaning muddies, and English teachers cringe
• Going on and on and on - as I'm truly trying not to do….
©2015, Mary Harwell Sayler has been blessed with many publishing credits including books of poems
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Great advice, Mary. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Joyce! And thanks, too, to Twitter followers who RT'd this. :)
ReplyDeleteAll that advice can be so hard to swallow,
ReplyDeleteYou speak words of truth- and those I will follow! ;)
Good for you, Beth! That's the attitude needed to have poems accepted in journals.
ReplyDeleteSuch great advice, Mary! As I've confessed to you before, poetry is my writing weakness, but these rules could also apply to prose, too. Thanks so much!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Martha. Glad it helps. God bless.
DeleteThank you this is good stuff. Things I do yet was never told not to. I really appreciate everything you write, it is so encouraging.
ReplyDeleteGood to hear! Thanks, Jonathan.
DeleteI tend to be long winded, working on that.
ReplyDeleteMarsha, that's a common concern for many poets. Reading then intentionally writing 4-line humorous poems or 3-line haiku can help.
DeleteThank you for sharing this valuable advise, Mary.
ReplyDeleteYou're surely welcome, Laurie. Thanks for letting me know it helped. God bless.
DeleteThe coolest advice I can think of, Mary. Thank you for telling me that a while ago. It is the best rule to begin editing. ��❤️❤️
ReplyDeleteThanks and blessings, Nells.
ReplyDelete