Young Writers Society

Hello fellow poets. I'm just here to share a poetry review pet peeve of mine: make it longer.

I often get this review, and I've seen it given many times. It bothers me, though, because I can't just magically make my poem longer. I get an idea, I jot it down quick, and then I think about it. The thinking part usually lasts a few days. Then I go back and edit my poem and fix it up, maybe add a rhyme scheme, whatever. I just find it almost insulting when somebody gives me a review to the effect of, "It was really good but it should be longer. Maybe add a couple more stanzas." Reader, it's not that easy. Although my poetry rolls of the tongue and it all pretty and everything, it is really HARD to write, and your assumption that it's so easy makes me feel like the rest of the poem is invalidated.

What are your thoughts on this?

I totally understand what you're talking about. I've gotten that saying maybe like twice, but it's still annoying.

Though I've never really said to make a poem longer, I will admit to having suggested to someone that they should flesh their poem out. But the reason I've used this in reviews is often because the poems I've suggested this on feel very bare and lacking in detail. It's something I've suggested for poems that feel like only the skeleton of a poem that really needs some flesh, tendons, and other gooey, icky things so that it seems less like a skeleton and more like a poem person...if that makes sense.

I've gotten this review with a couple of my shorter poems, that I could make it longer in the middle. It kind of exasperates me, because there really is no "middle" to my poems except the middle I wrote for them. I can't just magick up another couple of stanzas, especially not when I wrote the poem a while back.

I get that poems need to be fleshed out. Emotionally supported and strong is good, but "long" does not automatically equal "good poem". Most of my poetry is short, mostly because I write down the little thoughts that come to me and make them into a poem - I don't have time between one idea and the next to write two hundred gazillion lines of what the audience wants to read. You know?

Lets it fester and brood.

I was often given the same advice and it left me blank. I later realized that I probably had much to say but wasn't sitting over it plenty before 'posting' a particular piece. I'd just get impatient and give away the little I had written. Sit with your poem, till you feel its dense enough

I think it depends on the writer's personal preference.
I also think it depends on their mood.

Because I know, with myself, that mine depend on my mood.

My thoughts on this are, a poem doesn't have to be long to be good. I have a poem myself that is only four lines long.

(That poem is here:
viewtopic.php?f=10&t=88930&p=926399&hilit=coke+%26+pepsi#p926399)

It was only four lines long, but people on this site and at our school writer's guild thought it was awesome. I only had one person who wanted it to be longer, and that was because he wanted to know how the events of the poem came to happen.

Also, a four-line poem made it into our school's literary magazine.

So you can write as short a poem as you want. The only thing with this is, if you're going to write such a short poem, every word has to count. Your short poem still has to be equally epic to impress people as a long poem. But if it is, it'll impress people even more than a long poem, just because people recognize that it's so difficult to write a short yet awesome poem.

~Blue

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

- Willaim Carlos Williams

This little baby is widely considered to be a masterpiece of 20th century poetry. Case closed.