Two Sylvias' Weekly Muse: July 31, 2022
Issue 14
Hello Muse Readers,
It’s the last day of July!
Here’s a fun summer “assignment” for you to try sometime—write a really bad poem. Yes, you read that correctly—intentionally write a horrible piece of poetry.
Journalist and writing teacher Brenda Ueland would instruct her students to write an embarrassingly terrible short story. She believed that the process of intentionally making poor choices in terms of words, theme, plot, and structure would help her students recognize, and therefore avoid, the common mistakes and pitfalls encountered when writing a short story.
This same writing lesson must hold true for poems as well, right? Just for the fun of it, try composing the absolute worst poem you’ve ever written—a poem that will make you and any reader cringe.
Here are a few tips to help you:
Make generous use of sing-songy rhymes that really don’t make much sense.
Use tons of adjectives and adverbs.
Don’t use many verbs.
Use plenty of clichés.
Include an abundance of abstract concepts, avoiding co…