Young Writers Society

Okay, so I wrote a poem called "Inspiration", and one of the reviews called it an intimidating wall of text. I completely agree, but I have no clue how to break my lines into stanzas and fix this. Here is the poem:

It’s a mist that materializes
From the depths of thin air
And seeps through the ears
To the corners of the mind
Where it nestles deep
In peaceful arms of thoughts
Waiting for that day
One day that you’ll find
It waiting
Waiting
Patiently waiting
To be spilled out in ink
In your fervent creating
When the mist has swelled greater
Into an angry storm
And can rain through the hands
Of the weary and worn
That’ve been waiting
Waiting
For the lightning to strike
The thunder’s been booming
But they’ve yet to see light
They’ve only heard stories
Of the storm’s boundless might
Patches of mist
Wait still in the brain
Growing and waiting
To be freed from the chains
Of Unsure and Debating
To be part of Creating
It’s been waiting
That mist
That is called Inspiration
The mother of Creation
The unspoken declaration
It is waiting

I just kind of wrote this poem on a whim. I wasn't really feeling inspired about anything, so I wrote a poem about inspiration. Any advice on how I should break up these lines into stanzas or make this better would be greatly appreciated.

And by the way, I did publish this the proper way on YWS. Here's the link: Inspiration

I'll give you a quick review on the poem and address the stanza issue. c:

Thanks for the help!

A general rule of thumb is (unless you're following a form) stanzas loosely correspond to paragraphs. What this means is that each stanza should have a main focus which all the lines in it work towards establishing and strengthening. Overall, all the stanzas in the poem should contribute towards the overarching idea of the poem as a whole, so playing around with the structures of your stanzas (in addition to individual lines) is something to look into.

There's no hard and fast rules for stanzas, though, and stanzas are not required in poetry, with quite a lot of long poetry (epic-length) lacking stanzas (such as Beowulf).

So, basically, play around and see what you like, and see how others feel about it. That's the easiest way to get a feel for where to put in stanzas or line breaks, especially if you read up on the technical aspects of poetry and how they affect how a poem is read or perceived.

Aside from your poem making some connection with your audience, there really aren't any absolute musts in poetry.

Thank you for the help on understanding how I should break up my lines by comparing stanzas to paragraphs. That helped it make a lot more sense to me.