JohnBoddie
01-01-2002, 04:31 PM
Five Beginners' Blunders
(in response to a previous request)
People who are beginning to write poetry (at any age) have a wide variety of sites on the web where they can post and comment. A few thousand have come to pffa and, predictably, many have made the same basic mistakes. These mistakes interfere with the enjoyment and benefit the new author might get from pffa and they also interfere with the enjoyment of many of the people who already post and comment.
It's hoped that beginners will take the time to read this and will subsequently use pffa in a way that allows the site to achieve its goal of allowing poetic talent to develop through participation in the various forums.
The first blunder is not understanding the nature of an on-line poetry workshop. Pffa is a workshop. Participants are assumed to be here because they want to improve their abilities to write and/or critique poetry. Participants are expected post their work, give and receive comments and then act on the feedback they receive to improve both their current and subsequent poems. The process is one of give and take. Every forum at pffa is for criticism, more or less.
If you want to receive comments or praise for your work, but don't want to (or feel unable to) comment on the works of others, then you're not looking for a workshop, you're looking for a posting board. pffa is not for you. To paraphrase Buckminster Fuller - nobody's a passenger here, everybody's crew.
The second blunder is ignoring the audience. Everybody writes for their own satisfaction, and beginning authors may have received praise from family or friends for their work. At pffa, you are putting poems on display for strangers. They only know you through the words you put on the page. They don't know that you're only fourteen years old, or that you just broke up with your lover, or that your child just died unless the words in your poem convey this information.
Ignoring the audience lies behind the problems with poems about "this is what I did" or "this is how I feel." These poems are often called "diary entries". They might mean a lot to you, but the audience doesn't care. The audience only cares what your poem means to them, and they are coming to your poem without your direct experience.
A second problem that arises from ignoring the audience is the use of abstractions. If you write, "I'm sitting in the deep end of the swimming pool of misery", you probably have a pretty definite understanding of the way you felt when you wrote the line. Your audience, however, doesn't have a clue what went on in your head unless you take the initiative to explain it in the poem.
A third problem connected with ignoring the audience is sloppy preparation. Since you are writing for an audience, you need to consider the reader's experience. This experience includes the effort that the reader must expend to overcome any misspellings and grotesque punctuation. It's not necessary to use punctuation, but if you do you should use it correctly. Misspellings are most easily handled by typing your poem using a word processor and then spell checking it before you copy and paste it into a pffa topic.
The third blunder is leaping prior to looking. This problem is so frequent that one of the pffa moderators is rumored to have said "Have you read the posting guidelines" instead of "Hello" when she was introduced to her future in-laws. This blunder leads to:
> "Carpet Bombing" - the new author rushes to post poems at every forum at pffa as a way of making his or her presence known.
> "Where's the critique?" - the new author waits a half-hour and then posts a reply to his or her own poem wondering when everybody else is going the get off their butts and provide the critique that's supposed to be here.
> "I want strong comments. I can take it." - the new author puts his or her work in "High Criticism" or "Merciless" without bothering to see if it has any correlation in quality to other poems posted in those sections.
> "Give me a break. I'm only 10 years old." - One of the wonderful things about pffa is that it assumes that everyone is an adult until proven otherwise. Not only can readers not be sure that the beginner is, if fact, ten years old - readers don't care. Whether you are ten or ninety, it's your work that will be evaluated, not your age.
The fourth beginner's blunder is confusing the importance of the subject and the quality of the poem. Subjects like third-world starvation, spousal abuse and divine grace trigger an immediate reaction for most readers, but it's a reaction to the subject, not the poem. As a result, some beginning authors react to criticism as if it was an attack on the importance of the subject. The simple fact is that most poems on these subjects are little more than preaching to the already converted. The quality of the writing is often terrible. If you want to write about important subjects, make sure your poem is worthy of them.
The fifth blunder is not understanding the implications of the term moderated site. pffa is not a democracy. The moderators can remove your poem, change its location, delete your critiques, tell you which forums you are allowed to post and reply in, or bar you from the site for whatever reason they see fit. Generally, these reasons are correlated with the posting guidelines. If this power in the hands of moderators strikes you as being tyranny or an unwarranted restriction on artistic freedom, you should find another site. Your entrance fee will be refunded in full
If you've read this, your next stop should be reading the posting guidelines (if you haven't already). pffa has been beneficial to several thousand authors covering a pretty wide range of accomplishment and experience. We hope you'll find it beneficial as well.
JB
[This message has been edited by JohnBoddie (edited 01-01-2002).]
(in response to a previous request)
People who are beginning to write poetry (at any age) have a wide variety of sites on the web where they can post and comment. A few thousand have come to pffa and, predictably, many have made the same basic mistakes. These mistakes interfere with the enjoyment and benefit the new author might get from pffa and they also interfere with the enjoyment of many of the people who already post and comment.
It's hoped that beginners will take the time to read this and will subsequently use pffa in a way that allows the site to achieve its goal of allowing poetic talent to develop through participation in the various forums.
The first blunder is not understanding the nature of an on-line poetry workshop. Pffa is a workshop. Participants are assumed to be here because they want to improve their abilities to write and/or critique poetry. Participants are expected post their work, give and receive comments and then act on the feedback they receive to improve both their current and subsequent poems. The process is one of give and take. Every forum at pffa is for criticism, more or less.
If you want to receive comments or praise for your work, but don't want to (or feel unable to) comment on the works of others, then you're not looking for a workshop, you're looking for a posting board. pffa is not for you. To paraphrase Buckminster Fuller - nobody's a passenger here, everybody's crew.
The second blunder is ignoring the audience. Everybody writes for their own satisfaction, and beginning authors may have received praise from family or friends for their work. At pffa, you are putting poems on display for strangers. They only know you through the words you put on the page. They don't know that you're only fourteen years old, or that you just broke up with your lover, or that your child just died unless the words in your poem convey this information.
Ignoring the audience lies behind the problems with poems about "this is what I did" or "this is how I feel." These poems are often called "diary entries". They might mean a lot to you, but the audience doesn't care. The audience only cares what your poem means to them, and they are coming to your poem without your direct experience.
A second problem that arises from ignoring the audience is the use of abstractions. If you write, "I'm sitting in the deep end of the swimming pool of misery", you probably have a pretty definite understanding of the way you felt when you wrote the line. Your audience, however, doesn't have a clue what went on in your head unless you take the initiative to explain it in the poem.
A third problem connected with ignoring the audience is sloppy preparation. Since you are writing for an audience, you need to consider the reader's experience. This experience includes the effort that the reader must expend to overcome any misspellings and grotesque punctuation. It's not necessary to use punctuation, but if you do you should use it correctly. Misspellings are most easily handled by typing your poem using a word processor and then spell checking it before you copy and paste it into a pffa topic.
The third blunder is leaping prior to looking. This problem is so frequent that one of the pffa moderators is rumored to have said "Have you read the posting guidelines" instead of "Hello" when she was introduced to her future in-laws. This blunder leads to:
> "Carpet Bombing" - the new author rushes to post poems at every forum at pffa as a way of making his or her presence known.
> "Where's the critique?" - the new author waits a half-hour and then posts a reply to his or her own poem wondering when everybody else is going the get off their butts and provide the critique that's supposed to be here.
> "I want strong comments. I can take it." - the new author puts his or her work in "High Criticism" or "Merciless" without bothering to see if it has any correlation in quality to other poems posted in those sections.
> "Give me a break. I'm only 10 years old." - One of the wonderful things about pffa is that it assumes that everyone is an adult until proven otherwise. Not only can readers not be sure that the beginner is, if fact, ten years old - readers don't care. Whether you are ten or ninety, it's your work that will be evaluated, not your age.
The fourth beginner's blunder is confusing the importance of the subject and the quality of the poem. Subjects like third-world starvation, spousal abuse and divine grace trigger an immediate reaction for most readers, but it's a reaction to the subject, not the poem. As a result, some beginning authors react to criticism as if it was an attack on the importance of the subject. The simple fact is that most poems on these subjects are little more than preaching to the already converted. The quality of the writing is often terrible. If you want to write about important subjects, make sure your poem is worthy of them.
The fifth blunder is not understanding the implications of the term moderated site. pffa is not a democracy. The moderators can remove your poem, change its location, delete your critiques, tell you which forums you are allowed to post and reply in, or bar you from the site for whatever reason they see fit. Generally, these reasons are correlated with the posting guidelines. If this power in the hands of moderators strikes you as being tyranny or an unwarranted restriction on artistic freedom, you should find another site. Your entrance fee will be refunded in full
If you've read this, your next stop should be reading the posting guidelines (if you haven't already). pffa has been beneficial to several thousand authors covering a pretty wide range of accomplishment and experience. We hope you'll find it beneficial as well.
JB
[This message has been edited by JohnBoddie (edited 01-01-2002).]