10 Tips For Writing Better Poetry

[milo]

while i agree in general with everything said. i was perturbed by #7 isn't there a point where the reader is creating the poetry and not the poet. shouldn't there be just enough ambiguity to make the reader think or have something work on more that 1 level but not so much as to cloud the intent of the poet?

I agree with you completely, it is a bit of a balancing act, but that is part of the fun isn't it? Still, you have to point it out, otherwise you are a bad excuse for a tour guide, right?

a poem should observe what the /narrator/ should observe. If it is unnatural for the narrator to notice something, it comes through as unnatural. This tends to be why poems come across as "telly" because they say things the narrator shouldn't be saying. Writers need to get to know their narrators.