I dread reading...

So, I've been writing since I was a rather small child. I fell in love with words sometime around my high school years. I began writing poetry once "love" reared it's ugly side- which again, was around high school days. I started writing horror at an early age because I was most interested in Stephen King.. and coincidentally, his books and Poe's stories were a great inspiration to me early on. There were many more, but that is not the intent of this blog... this blog will be a bit of  a venting session because quite frankly I feel like I will explode if I read another dreaded ill-written poem!!

I used to teach creative writing, and back then I got paid to read people's horrible, ghastly poems and stories. Let me be clear, I'm not talking about JUST punctuation (that was usually the least of the dread) , I'm talking about originality, voice, flow, development, structure etc. Back then and still today, I just could not and cannot comprehend how people could write such horrible "sounding" poems and stories! My outlet was that my creative writing class was known as a very "hard" class and you had to have some serious guts in order to take my class. Most people didn't stay and most quit. But the ones that did stay became much better writers and went on to write great stories and poetry. I was so critical of what was passed onto my desk I often wondered if I was just too obscene with my corrections. I would turn in stories that were half full of red marks and suggestions and corrections. Only 'half full" because across the top of most papers I would write the infamous, "I could not stomach to read the rest." (Most papers I could only make it half way through) So there is a little preface to this blog...

So here is why I might explode.... I've recently joined an online writing community, and I've posted just a few poems of old that are to my liking, and decided to browse other poems that are within the community. I really didn't have high hopes, but considering this is an actual writing community, I figured I'd find one or two that could keep my attention. WRONG! I browsed for a while, and could usually only make it through the first couple lines. I literally asked myself, "Do they even READ these themselves?- out loud??!" One way to correct a poem is to read it out loud. Once you read it out loud you will notice flow and voice errors. These authors I suspect were not taking advantage of that very simple tool. BUT - it got worse!! After the poems I would scroll down and read the tons and tons of accolades left in the form of comments on these pages and pages of horrible "poems"! The accolades upset me more than the poem themselves because it only served to reinforce bad writing! But then I figured something out.. on a few of the ones that had tons of comments I noticed that the profile picture was of an attractive woman. Then I noticed most of the comments were from men. Is there a connection?- I believe so. Now, with ALLLLLL that said... I know some of you may think: 'Well poetry is personal and it can sound like whatever the author wants'... and to you I say very simply.. look at Poe, or Shakespeare, or Hughes, Cummings, Frost, Langston etc...  and you will read flow, word choice, voice, structure, punctuation, development. I don't claim to be a Master Poet, but I do look to these for inspiration and purpose. I think I read through (at least a few stanzas) of over 20 poems. So yes, I dread reading any further but will continue my search to find a diamond in the rough.