Fakin' It

I would play for time,

and you would play for change

Sitting on the silent train, 

escaping yesterday 

The little graves 

in our misty gardens

where we buried 

the old tortured bodies 

with sleepy souls 

Faking a death

to be alive tomorrow 

They lament,

we simply borrow 

Reviews

[JayG]

• I would play for time, and you would play for change

I did that? Really? Strangely, I don't remember the incident. Are you certain you meant me?

My point? This is you, someone the reader knows nothing about, talking to someone you never introduce, about the result of events you never specify. From the reader's viewpoint, so what? For all we know it's the author's fault.

The problem you face is that readers come to poetry hoping to be moved emotionally—to be made to care. They want people to care about. They want interesting use of language and situations that involve, not inform.

Talking TO the reader is a nonfiction technique that can only inform. But while nonfiction will say, "I cried at my father's funeral, a poet will make the reader weep. And we learned not the smallest part of the skills needed to do that in our school days.

That makes sense, given that the goal of our schooling was to prepare us for employment. So correcting that is job one for those whose goal is to please the reader with their poetry. After all, they've been refining the techniques of poetry for centuries, so digging into that body of work and making it yours makes sense. As Wilson Mizner put it: “If you steal from one author it’s plagiarism; if you steal from many it’s research.” So research!

A really good resource is Mary Oliver's, A Poetry Handbook. You can pull in a readable copy at the link below, but in the end, you'll probably want a copy of your own. It's an eye-opening book, one everyone hoping to write poetry should read.
https://yes-pdf.com/book/1596

Sorry my news isn't better. But since we won't address the problem we don't see as being one, I thought you would want to know why you're not receiving the number of happy responses to your poetry that you might want.

Hang in there, and keep on writing.

Jay Greenstein
https://jaygreenstein.wordpress.com/category/the-craft-of-writing/the-grumpy-old-writing-coach/