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Ok. It's me, the originality police, with a challenge to everyone to do the hard work it takes to create an original poem with depth and specificity.
Depth and power in a poem come from specificity (of experience, of detail). Depth and power come when a writer "shows" his/her emotional experience instead of "telling".
Tell: I am sad.
Show: My world seems slow, and heavy.
So, here's the challenge. Do an exercise, write a trite, unoriginal poem (or take one from someone else - not an author here at PnP) and rewrite it with greater specificity, greater depth, and more "showing."
For example:
A poem which says, "I can't wait to see you again" is not as deep, not as unique, not as powerful or interesting as one which says, "I absently scratch, with bitten finger nails, lightly at the threadbare fabric of the sofa, distracted from my book by the anticipation of your return."
What makes this passage more compelling is not the flowery language, or the longer sentence. It's the scratching, the threadbare fabric, the book. A reader will wonder, "is the fabric threadbare from the scratching?" The detail will bring it to life, give the reader handles, separate this poem from the thousands of other love poems in the world.
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Here's mine:
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Roses are red.
Violets are blue.
Angels in Heaven
Know I love you.
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Becomes:
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To touch a single red petal
Of a satin red rose
Is to know the sublime wonder
Of the skin on your nose.
To see the blue of twin violets
In a field of green grass,
Cannot remotely compare to
Your two eyes of blue glass.
The warm breezes that blow these days
Are whispering to me.
They are the voices of angels,
Confirming I love thee.
~
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Help Us Stop Plagiarism -
Nearly all works at PnP are original. However a few people choose to plagiarize.
To check, choose a phrase from the work, then either drag and drop to the search box or copy and paste.
click on search and works at Google will be shown which match. Just to be sure, please do this before
you recommend or rate the work highly...
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