Brandiwyn🎶 v.2026, also known as Michelle Tuesday, is a musician, educator and writer hailing from Columbus, Ohio.
La Bene Vita
The (Tentative*) Topic Rotation Self Sundays: Personal blogging days about family, leisure, work, and health. May be boring.
Music Mondays: Commentary, articles, and links highlighting music, theory, and ed topics.
Writing Wednesdays: Discussion on the art and business of writing. "Invalid Item" Thursdays: A weekly original short story submission.
Friday Reviews**: Every Friday, I will review a minimum of one short story on WDC.
* I reserve the right to change the topic of the day at any time, at least until I acquire a million followers and gain official "influencer" status, at which point I shall be more consistent in order to meet the expectations of my adoring public.
** I can only commit to one review per week. If you would like your short story to be in my reviewing queue, please send me a WDC review request. Checkout my public reviews toget a sense of what to expect.
I love a good turn of phrase, and even novels have poetic pieces within them. I'm excited to hear you're getting into poetry and hope we can explore that more.
Anni Pon- having to plan or edit poetry seems a little antithetical to it's nature.
This is an excellent point, and something I didn't think of. I also agree with your other comments.
I agree with what you've said about poetry. It's very easy to write a poem, just about anyone can do it. But it's hard to do it well. Most people have an innate sense of story telling, so amateur prose usually isn't as cringe. A lot of people seem to think that if you just add line breaks to your current stream of consciousness, or put together a series of lines that rhyme, that's a poem. But poetry has rules -- it requires meter and imagery and abstraction. It should have layers. Those things don't usually come naturally; they require intentional effort and planning. However, most people have the impression you can just sit down and poetry will flow out of you without even trying or having to edit after. In fact, having to plan or edit poetry seems a little antithetical to it's nature.
To be fair, mediocre poetry still serves a purpose. It's writing practice, catharsis, bonding, etc. I've definitely seen some on here that have a lot of potential, as well as some really good "amateur" poetry.
Charlèaux - I agree and love WDC too! I've personally posted a lot of less-than-brilliant works of all varieties and learned from feedback. I actually feel like reviewing the work of others teaches me just as much, if not more. Nineteen years is a lot of learning! I should have a PhD by now. I certainly don't mean to discourage anyone, beginner or otherwise. It's just how I learned to recognize good poetry and what makes it good, that ability to compare/contrast. I appreciate the variety that allowed me to learn. So I'm not saying don't post your beginner poetry.
Robert Waltz- To your point that sometimes authors just need the catharsis of writing the words, I'm with you - if I feel like it's more intended as a personal journaling experience, I don't review it. On a related note, I never really circled back about reviewing poetry as a "quick read" to meet reviewing goals. Over the years, as I've become better at noticing the layers in brilliant poetry, it can actually take much longer to read, digest, analyze, and properly review. And good point about imagery being a key element of poetry.
One thing I look for in poetry is concrete imagery. If you're just writing about your feelings, even if it rhymes and has meter, it's not what I'd call good poetry. And yes, I'm including my own efforts in that.
But.
Writing it can be a kind of release for the writer, and I can understand that. Reviewing such poetry is difficult, at least for me, especially when I can tell it's heartfelt and very personal. To be perfectly honest, most of the time, I skip such efforts when I'm on a reviewing kick.
I call such work "angsta rap," because it's all angst, and lots of words that don't really communicate anything new.
One of the most important writing lessons I've learned here is that, paradoxically, the more specific you are in your writing, the more relatable it can be. Writing something like "My parents never understood me" is boring; instead, if you wrote something like "They gave me a Playstation when I wanted an Xbox" is closer to the right track, in my opinion. This is especially important in comedy, I think, but it's also applicable to other genres.
A lot of poems on WdC leave something to be desired. So does a lot of the fiction, or really any form of writing on here.
I think the reason for that is because this is not a publishing company. This is a website for writers to share their work—first drafts, unpolished... And I think that's one of the best things of WdC.
Like you said, that's not to say that these pieces are all inherently bad. It just means that this community has become a safe space for people to not only share their finished, edited, and perfect work, but it's also a space to share those midnight thoughts, random poems that hold no meaning, or maybe a piece that they know they'll never go back to edit but they share it anyway.
Because that's what WdC is: Unedited, clumsy, non-published writing from mostly amateurs. That's why I love WdC. Sure, I get to read a lot of crappy pieces. But if those people stick around, I also get to watch them get better and improve their work.
This is also a great site because it's one of the few places where you get to come across published authors as well as the 14 year old who just wrote their very first poem and had the guts the post it.
This isn't me disagreeing with you. Really it's me agreeing with you. But that's why I love WdC. Some pieces melt my brain with emotions, and others make me cringe while trying to read through grammatical errors. It's like Russian roulette but with words.
if you're curious, she made it in time for my lesson.
I'm learning a lot and apparently she's allowing my muse to lead us.
I swear this isn't some kind of rookie mistake...
For today's edition of "Writing Wednesdays," I'm opening a discussion on the topic of poetry.
Disclaimer
I have never claimed to be a poet.
As a writer, I consider myself first and foremost an author of long-form fiction (think, novel trilogy and higher.) I recently revised my bio to identify as a "Professional world-builder and prolific author of partially-completed novel drafts." I excel at the partial draft, y'all, but poetry has never really been my bag, baby.
Lyrics
Maybe surprisingly, given my actual vocation (music teacher, if you don't know), songwriting has taken second place to serial noveling. I do compose music, and I've written original songs with lyrics, most of which I've even performed in public, but lyric creation is not where I derive songwriting pleasure. My muse traditionally speaks to me in chord progressions, melody and arrangement; words are just a necessary piece of the puzzle - the grunt work, even. In fact, I've historically been more inclined to set someone else's words to music so I can skip that part. (Y'all know who you are. )
Change
Traditions change.
I kicked off my second half of a century on this spinning planet last September and decided I'm allowed to change my mind. I'm not sure how or when it happened, but I learned how to appreciate - and even write - poetry, and lately I've found my muse talking in a new language: the language of imagery, of metaphor, of personification and alliteration.
I blame WDC.
But for the record, I partially blame WDC for souring me on poetry in the first place. I tread delicately here, because I'm sure some of my readers enjoy writing poetry...
The Rub
A lot of the poetry on WDC is mediocre.
Where do I get off, saying a poem is mediocre? Especially since I opened this blog post with the disclaimer that I'm not a poet. Do I even get an opinion on the matter?
As with everything else in my blog, these are my opinions. As with any review you've ever received from me, take what you find helpful and trash the rest. In fact, pour accelerant over it and toss it in the incinerator for a fun ka-boom.
(I mean no disrespect to WDC or any of the writers here. It's the only place I read poetry, particularly amateur (aka, unpaid) poetry, to be able to look for the qualities of a good poem.)
, in part because (admit it - you've done it, too) poems tend to be shorter than stories, which is convenient if you're trying to achieve a reviewing goal. And in nineteen years of reading and reviewing content on WDC, I've discovered a few things about poetry - and what makes it good.
1. Poetry is hard.
Were you ever an angsty teen, scribbling your feelings in a journal? I was. Sometimes, it rhymed. Sometimes, it included some meter. I probably didn't know a single form back then.
I'm not saying form is required. I'm not saying angsty teens can't write amazing poetry. I'm saying that I didn't write amazing poetry. I wrote my thoughts and feelings, usually in stream-of-consciousness form, but divided into lines, which I shoved into awkward rhyme. I'm talking, shoved, like I shove my six-foot knitted scarf into my winter coat pocket: a wadded-up, lumpy ball with loose ends hanging out.
See what I did there? That's called imagery. It's also a simile. But you knew that.
In my teen journaling days, a poem would be inspired by a single rhyme or assonance with a meter that felt melodious in my head. I would start writing in line and verse form instead of paragraph, and I'd squeeze those rhymes in that broke the meter or sounded really obviously forced.
I've learned that you can't write a poem in one sitting. You can't. Poetry has to simmer, and then, actual work is required to compose, tweak, rearrange, throw out that whole stanza altogether, change the theme completely. That's when the wordplay begins.
2. Poetry is clever.
You might need to research. Review your list of literary devices - all of them - and find the ones that jump off the screen at you - that's your muse talking. Then brainstorm. Experiment. Add layers. Then add more layers.
You might also need to be prepared to kill that darling you desperately don't want to delete, because it's the thing that kicked off the poem in the first place, but sometimes, you have to shut up and do what your muse says. You know deep down that she's right. You just have to find a way to accept it.
What I've found on WDC is that there are poems that look like they were written in one sitting with little-to-no simmer time, no extra work or time invested into playing with the words.
And there are also brilliant masterpieces.
3. Poetry is like music.
The masterpieces are the reason for my change of heart. If it's a true masterpiece, in my opinion, it reads like music. In fact, reading a poem aloud is one method I use to determine its brilliance.
That might not jive with everyone because poetry is art. By definition, art is subject to interpretation. You could love something I think is just awful, and vice versa. But there are elements of poetry that make it poetry and not some other art form, and I feel like the rhythm of a poem, the music of it, is one of the critical elements.
Conclusions
Writing poetry isn't as unfun as I thought it might be.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on what makes poetry poetry. Examples would be great. You're also welcome to debate my strong opinions on the subject matter.
it's now on the list!
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, also known as Michelle Tuesday, is a musician, educator and writer hailing from Columbus, Ohio.
Thursdays: A weekly original short story submission.