YWS is cool for a bazillion different reasons. One of these bazillion reasons is that we actually hold fiction and poetry on an equal level. Many other writing sites, believe it or not, do not do this and either specialize in poetry or fiction.

With that said, I’ve been browsing the poetry forums and, to be honest, I haven’t been very impressed. There are several outstanding poems out there, I admit, but most of them are the same subjects (usually, angst and woe) told in the same way (loneliness, despair, etc.). And it’s kind of boring.

The problem is that many YWS poets don’t read poetry. That is, they’ll read each other’s poetry and comment on each other’s poems because they want to get critiques, but many of them will not sit down and pick up a book of Lorca, Frost, Dickinson, and read poetry, just for fun. This is sad, because there is a reason why those poets are great. They simply are beautiful wordsmiths that create startling images out of black and white. And they employ metaphor, symbolism, storytelling… anything to get their words across.

In contrast, what do many YWS poets do? Simply complain about their life, in stanza form. Oh, and they might throw in a metaphor about blood or flowers.

But this is understandable because that’s all they’ve read. And that’s why you must read great poetry. Very few people are so creative that they can create a masterpiece without any inspiration from other, better writers. You have to be able to read it to believe that poetry can scope across the universe and still be absolutely gorgeous.

So go forth, YWS poets, and read! YWS depends on you…