Young Writers Society

Hello Autopilot,

I think this poem has two parts to it so I'm going to address them both. You said you wrote this a month ago, but it's something that people struggle with a lot. The first part is this poem, as a poem, and how I think you could improve that. The next part is just, in general, things I think can improve writing in general, whether it's poems, poetry, or what have you. You're talking about an issue of having your words "fail" you, so I'd like to tackle how you can make them work for you instead.

To begin with I think you've got an honest poem here, you're really trying to express something you feel, or your speaker feels. Poetry isn't always from our point of view after all, so I think having the ability to make it sound and feel like the poem is from a real person is critical. Here you do that by juxtaposing simple lines and sentences with an inability to write about experiences. This works well because you're showing the speaker's inability to write what they feel.

However, for the sake of a poem, even a poem about an inability to write should have some sort of garden path that it leads a reader down to create the feeling that you're looking for. In this particular type of poem, I'd suggest you rant, honestly. I think if you just wrote out everything you were feeling in a nice long rant, trying to work in examples and metaphors for what you're feeling, you'd end up with something that really expresses what you're trying to say, especially if you did it word war style where you just type and don't edit, then go back and edit words that need fixing.

The way that this would be different than what you have is because what you have here as a poem feels planned, even though it's about not being able to write. The consistency of your lines and the simplicity of them really makes it feel like you're writing with the intent to write something large, rather than just getting out what you want to say. It feels like you're giving a speech rather than talking to me, as a reader.

Also, here's an edit you need:

I try to put in in a picture

You have a double word here, "In in" rather than "try to put it in"

So the other side of this, how do you write what you want to express as one writer to another? Personally I think the best way to really get into the mindset where your words won't fail you is just by reading and writing more.

Right now your poetry is under-performing because of your lack of descriptors and specifics. If you read a poem like this one: Horns then you can see there's a huge difference here. Horns is written by Kwame Dawes, and published in a poetry magazine. He could be like you and I, trying to get our works published and noticed for the first time. He only has three picked up on Poetry.org. So what makes his work publishable and not yours? What's the difference?

His work is filled with descriptors and specifics. He introduces the subject and then delves into the analogy/metaphor he's using without going back into what reality is, instead, he focuses just on the metaphor, a single metaphor, and gets into detail with it that we wouldn't think about off the top of our head.

When we're writing, we often grab the first example we come up with and go with that, it's easy, it's not a challenge to think of examples when most things have examples. For instance, if I said love, describe love, you'd probably think of racing hearts, broken hearts, pulse racing, heat, warmth, and things like that. These first things you come up with are from other sources, not yourself. They're coming from experiences, from how other people talk about things, and because of that, they're already used, and cliche. It's not until you finish with the easy list and really grasp at straws, really struggle to come up with something for yourself, that you actually come up with something that other people haven't said.

Writing takes time, even writing poetry takes time. The time here isn't from typing though, like in a novel, it's from thinking and developing your own language about the world around you. I think where you're at right now is developing that language, and as you struggle to be unique, you're focused on getting work out there, rather than being you, and talking from yourself, from your own thoughts and feelings. That's the struggle you're trying to describe here, but you're doing it by stating what's going on, instead of delving into the feelings that it causes.

You have a line in here that I'd like to see you grab and hold onto. "They whirl around like leaves on the wind" If you take that line, and develop a poem about your feelings and that metaphor, just describing it, or your feelings, nothing else, I think you'll come up with something you'll like. Just, don't go with the first thing you think, go with the fourth or fifth. Run out all the thoughts that are easy, and find something that's difficult to come up with, something that's uniquely you, and use that.

The reason I picked that line is because I think the image will help you get into the mindset of describing things in the physical. The more senses you put into poetry, the better. For example in "Horns" he has sight, smell, sound, and taste. The sight is between sight, he does that one the most, but in a way that develops what is going on in the poem. Smell is sour porridge, and taste is that as well. There is also touch with how he describes dancing, and the collective body. Then sound, sound he snuck in here with mosquito because it teases the sense of hearing them buzz. If you do that, it helps create a sense of self in the poem that's hard to develop otherwise.

Overall, I'd suggest you focus on developing your abilities to really hone in on what you want to say in your own voice. Try not to say things that you've heard before, or, if you're not sure, do a google search of the phrase and if it pops up with something similar, avoid it. One way you can try to avoid this is to just let it all out, rant, really develop a paragraph or three about this situation and just go wild with it, get everything out, all the frustration, anger, sadness, anything, and just let it come out. Oftentimes this will get you beyond things that have already been said because we don't remember everything exactly like it used to be, so it'll help push you beyond what you're familiar with as you just keep writing. Don't stop until you're done feeling frustrated/whatever and describe everything you feel and want to say because that'll help draw the reader into the same mindset.

Another way is to consider the first three or four things you think of whenever you're trying to come up with something to say cliche or done before, and just keep searching until you find something that was difficult to come up with. This takes longer, and it can cut the emotion in a poem, but it's an option if you really want to talk about something that's been done to death like love.

Sorry for the length. >.>;

I hope, if you got to the bottom of this, it helps.
Aley