I really like this one. I'm not particularly sure why, but just for you I'll try to pinpoint it.
When I went to Governor's School, my poetry teacher made us read this manual for writing good poetry by June Jordan. We all hated it and rebelled against it, 'cause I mean, c'mon, we were 17 year old kids who didn't want some stranger telling us how we could write our poetry. We didn't want boundaries. I still sort of resent June Jordan, and we all wrote her horrible ode poems, but regardless, one of the 10 things she said is to minimize words and avoid usage of any form of "to be." As much as I hate to admit it, it does make poetry better - the elimination of "to be" (not necessarily ALL of it, but just in general). Which brings me to my point -
All of your verbs are action verbs, which makes it so much easier to visualize. Not to mention the fact that I really like the last line and the stanza about "Pain is the family..."
i completely agree with minimum (if possible, non-) usage of the forms of "to be". any writing can benefit from that.
i do however, disagree with minimizing the amount of words used. granted that writing entire paragraphs doesn't make for a good poem, but the other extreme is true as well... poems laid bare can be plain and boring... or come off as trying too hard to be "modern". being wordy is a problem, but being worldless is worse.
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When I went to Governor's School, my poetry teacher made us read this manual for writing good poetry by June Jordan. We all hated it and rebelled against it, 'cause I mean, c'mon, we were 17 year old kids who didn't want some stranger telling us how we could write our poetry. We didn't want boundaries. I still sort of resent June Jordan, and we all wrote her horrible ode poems, but regardless, one of the 10 things she said is to minimize words and avoid usage of any form of "to be." As much as I hate to admit it, it does make poetry better - the elimination of "to be" (not necessarily ALL of it, but just in general). Which brings me to my point -
All of your verbs are action verbs, which makes it so much easier to visualize. Not to mention the fact that I really like the last line and the stanza about "Pain is the family..."
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i do however, disagree with minimizing the amount of words used. granted that writing entire paragraphs doesn't make for a good poem, but the other extreme is true as well... poems laid bare can be plain and boring... or come off as trying too hard to be "modern". being wordy is a problem, but being worldless is worse.
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