Editing For Emotion
One of the most common things to hear about poetry is that it "isn't emotional" for a reviewer, but what does that mean? First, know a poem doesn't have to be geared toward eliciting emotion from a reader. It can be written to elicit deeper contemplative thought or to present a clean observation of the world surrounding the speaker. Just because a poem doesn't have emotion doesn't mean it's bad.
If you're a poet who wants to elicit emotion, and you just can't seem to get there, the following are some tips and tricks to help determine what is missing so you can edit a poem to create an emotional piece after the fact.
The first section, Finding Emotion in Poetry, will help you determine if you can find emotion in your poetry yourself and define some of the ways emotion operates language. Afterwards, Preaching in Poetry will cover language which is considered "preachy" and provide tools to help identify preachy language, as well as some definitions. Last, Adding Emotion to a Poem will give you tools to edit and revise a poem to infuse it with a boost of the emotion you want.
For those of you unfamiliar with words like allusion, connotation, alliteration, metaphor, simile, and so forth, please see this article: Kiss My Assonance - 5 Ways to Improve Your Poetry
If you want a more generalized article on editing poetry, check out the sister article to this one: Editing Your Baby
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