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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