Lately I’ve been hanging around Deviantart, hoping to find some nice poetry to read.

Who the hell was I kidding? I’ve found maybe 3 pieces I enjoy, and the rest are crap. Here’s why I hate the vast majority of today’s poetry. Note: Examples are written by me.

“I miss someone WAAAHH” ≠Poetry
When I look at you I cry
Because you left me in the night
With nothing but my tears to keep me company

Now, what’s wrong with this bit? It’s just somebody’s feelings put into verse. I generally hate it when poetry discusses crying in an obvious way (”a wave crashes out of my eyes”, “I taste salt in my sobbing mouth”, “I am crying”) because it’s boring. I don’t care how hard you are crying or how much you miss somebody. If you’re not going to put a semi-original spin on it, don’t write it. Save it for your diary.

Random Spacing = Headaches
The T O T A L I T Y of the situation
Is S T U N N I N G
to M E

I see a word as a family of letters. When the letters are spaced out like this, it screams “dysfunctional family” - or maybe “dysfunctional keyboard”. There is no reason why there needs to be a space between every letter. It doesn’t add to the meaning, although it does add to my headache.
P.S. - The totality of the situation is stunning? As opposed to what, the part of the situation is stunning? Please.

Rhyme Time = Groan, Moan
When I saw your face today
I wanted you to go away
Because see u broke my heart
I think u tore it apart

Wow, “cry” and “die” rhyme well? Brush up your Swedish, you might win a Nobel! I’m being sarcastic, in case you can’t tell. Obvious rhymes make a poem sound like hell. One of the reasons I’m not inclined towards rhyming poetry is because the rhymes are rarely original. Chances are, if it rhymes, Dr. Seuss did it first.

Inconsistencies = WTF
I miss u so much
I wish u’d come home
U broke my heart
I hope u stay gone

So first you miss him and then 2 lines later you don’t? Was there any thought put into this poem at all? Did you write whilst you were intoxicated? I get the mixed emotions thing, but most of the time there’s no segue between the loving and the hating in poetry. Abrupt changes throw me off, and I don’t like being thrown off.

OMG I read it out loud so it must be classified as “Spoken Word” = Dumbass much?

This one has no example because it’s more of a writer’s trait that I hate, versus a poetic trait that I hate. Poets tend to say, “Oh, this poem is spoken word” just because they read it out loud. Was the poem written with the intention of being spoken? Was it spoken, in part or in whole, before being written down? No? Then it shouldn’t be classified as spoken word. Spoken word is rap, hip-hop, or slam poetry, NOT your woeful poem that was spoken after being read.

Big Words = “Do you even know what those words mean?”
A quasi-superficial entity illuminated,
She dwelt lethargically, totemic, yet risqué
in the impermeable compartment

So you flipped through the dictionary, put your finger on a random word, and repeated. Such talent you have. You do NOT know what those words mean. Even I do not know what those words mean, and I’m a girl who loves words and knows thousands and thousands of them. Is this poem going to be read by members of Mensa? No? Then stop trying to impress them with your nonsense.

“I wrote a sonnet” ≠You are smart

This too has no example, since it is more of a writer thing than a poem thing. People like to write sonnets because I guess Shakespeare is cool now. I won’t say that the sonnet is dead, but the good sonnet is nearing extinction. The sonnets these days are often fractured - every other line rhyming means nothing if the syllable count isn’t there. And the sonnet offers a set place for bad rhymes (see “Rhyme Time = Groan, Moan). Do the good sonnets still exist?

I’m not picking on any one poet. Maybe I made fun of Shakespeare a little bit, and perhaps I took a peek at one of my friend’s poems as reference, but this is more about general writers than any specific one. I don’t write poetry very much anymore, but I do read it often, and I know crap when I read it. And a majority of writing today is crap.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 1st, 2008 at 7:37 pm and is filed under Rantings, Internet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comments are closed. Deal with it.