Young Writers Society

I was wondering what ya'll think! 'Cause I'm one of those prose writers that is afraid to write poetry at all because I just suck. Really bad. It's not even funny.

So what do you think? Is poetry actually beneficial for us to learn to write? Explain yourselves!

I think yes. I know that overall, I'm a novelist. However, I think it's good to experiment and try every kind of writing. I mean, for one, poetry can show you how to work with imagery, which can help with descriptions in prose writing.
Basically, the more you write the better, regardless of what you write. Besides, you might discover that you're really good at writing poetry, or you might find a way to incorporate poems into your prose.

I think that poetry can be a great space to develop as a prose writer! It's so different from prose, it pulls from different skills in writing that prose might not work at the same. While not all aspects of poetry translate to prose, it could really open up the way you think about prose in general.

That being said, I'm awful at poetry and rarely write it. xD But I find that reviewing poetry on YWS does a lot to get me thinking different ways about things like pace and rhythm!

Depends on the person, but I tried out poetry and have found that, in general, it appears I'm better at writing poetry than I am at prose. It's even more natural or something. O.o

Continuing on, I believe that poetry is great for many things, one of which is just getting your brain to work in a new way. That on its own is a good enough reason.

Of course, poetry also prompts deeper thought about word choice, brevity, how your writing sounds to the ear and looks on the page, and imagery.

In other news, I know, for one thing, that "Beowulf" sort of blew my mind. I'd never read epic poetry before then, and now I realize it's a thing you can do and I'm still mesmerized. I still can remember the feel of a poem about heritage a student teacher read one day. I still remember "My Mother Combs My Hair". Even if you don't plan on writing poetry, reading it will open your brain to new avenues and, as I mentioned before, it's well worth it.

No, because that would mean that the opposite is true. Rest assured that, while I may be pretty okay at that business called prose, I have to say that I'm about as terrible as poets come.

Yes! Though you don't have to be good at poetry (trust me, I suck at poetry!) you tend to think about metering and word choice and all that stuff a lot more when you are writing poetry. This stuff is INVALUABLE when you write that novel!