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For those who have been around this help book a while, they know I've been pretty harsh about Wattpad poets in the past. I've been harsh with a lot of things in the past, but I've mellowed out quite a bit. I've gotten closer to right, as well.
When you write poetry, you need two things: practice and perspective. This isn't unlike writing prose. Practice is pretty self-explanatory. You need to read poetry and write poetry to get good at it.
It's great to write about yourself, how you feel, and to use poetry to explore the questions you have about life and about the world. I encourage you to explore!
However, be careful. Don't get pretentious. Don't throw around words you don't really understand. If you couldn't use the word easily in day-to-day speech, you probably shouldn't include it in your poetry. What's the point of poetry if you're using words you don't understand? How can you speak to yourself deeply this way, much less speak deeply to your audience?
And you appear foolish and possibly conceited, too. I can't tell you how often I read poetry where it is, unfortunately, very clear that the writer isn't versed in the words that they wield. You can't pass off as something you're not, and why would you want to?
Poetry isn't about using big words to wander around foggy themes.Poetry is a precision medium, which a good poet uses to connect her inner beauty to her reader's inner beauty.
Poetry that you post, like life, is not about you-you-you. And you shouldn't share poems with people using tools you don't handle deftly. If you don't know English as well as your first language, for instance, be very careful about writing in English. This goes for anyone writing in a language where your first language isn't that language. Be careful about using words you just learned in an English class or a book, to give another example.
So please, write away, but be yourself. Don't pretend to be Shakespeare or Walt Whitman or Basho. All of this goes for poetic language you might use in prose as well. Use language you truly understand, and your poetry will be ten times better for it. If you're advanced, you're advanced. If you're not, you're not. There's nothing to be ashamed about. I'd rather read a poem chock-full of emojis than read a poem with a lot of misused words, and why? Because I'll better understand it.
