Kill me now?

Every time I judge a contest on allpoetry, I vow to never do it again, for the simple reason that NO ONE WHO ENTERS MY CONTEST KNOWS WHAT A POEM IS!!!! Ahem. Examples.


If it's not a long rant about the war in Iraq (not a poem), it's a long sob story about a relative dying (not a poem).

Or it's a shock value "poem", such as "Chocolate is delicious. I'll spend an entire stanza telling you this. But when you eat it, you're actually EATING THE FLESH OF CHILDREN IN SLAVE LABOR!!!!" (wish I was making this up)

Or, one of my favorites, the "profound" "poems" where the "poet" randomly leaves out articles and other "necessary" bits of grammar. "I ate sun masquerade" is not profound. Neither is "black mirror eyes ellipsis moon shadow". (to be nice, I didn't actually quote the faux profound poem. I just made up my own that were very very similar) (Oh, and yes, I am overusing quotation marks. Thanks for noticing. It often goes with these sorts, so. . . . )

Or the "I like ellipsises...
They are so cool...
I will use them...
Exclusively...
At the end of each...
Line that I break randomly...
And...
Instead... of any other kind... of punctuation..."

Or there's always the "I am so dark and twisted and misunderstood, so I will just toss random gross imagery in here, kay?" Such as "The knife stabs in. Torture of hooks and knives. Blood pools amid vomit below her corpse. I laugh as I drink it in." (Oh, how I wish I was making this up)

Or, an oldie but a goodie, "Love, love love, ooey gooey love love love, love, love CANCER!!!!! CANCER KILLED HER!!!!!" Sigh.

There's more. So many more. But these are merely the examples I found in a single contest with only THIRTEEN entries. Understand the title yet?

And I'm not even done judging it yet. . . I fear for my sanity. And the worst part: I have to comment on each one. Let's just say there's been a lot of "Interesting idea" or "Your poem would benefit from proper punctuation. And grammar. And spelling. And formatting. And line breaks. And content."


Ahem. Thank you all for listening to me rant. Notice how I didn't post this as a poem on the site? (not a poem)


P.S. I hope I haven't offended anyone. But really, if you fall under any of these categories and can take something from this to improve your poetry, I'd prefer that to you flaming me. . . .