by Paul Rance

Created on: June 04, 2010

Often in writing poetry, less is more. Some poets will feel that a short poem won't be appreciated as much as a long poem. They will feel that there's a certain amount of pressure to write more, to prove that they have such a good grasp of writing poetry that they can write many lines in a poem. Though how many times do you see a long, rambling poem which could easily be more effective if it was at least half as long?

Every poet should write as well as they can, and not as much as they can. If you write short poems, but know that your longer work is of a lesser standard, then it is erroneous to write more because you feel you have to. William Shakespeare's sonnets are of sublime quality, and show that there is massive concentration at work. Shakespeare's sonnets are only 14 lines long.

Some poets will start off by only managing to write short poems successfully, but will then gravitate to longer work, and write that successfully, too. Others will write with a passion, and with very deliberate care taken over every word, rhyme scheme, etc. These poets will find writing long poems fairly exhausting, and there'd be a fair chance that the quality of their work will suffer - unless they tackled writing a long poem over a period of days.

A good poem is a good poem - regardless of whether it's a haiku, senryu, or an epic or a ballad. No one would prefer to read a badly written poem of 100 lines over a moving sonnet. Any poet really needs to bear that in mind.

In fact, most badly written poetry is often a poem which is obviously too long, and in need of a good edit, and needs to be stripped down. The reason long poems don't work a lot of the time is because the poet has become over ambitious, and beginner poets are particularly prone to this sort of mistake. They are trying to write in a way which is beyond them, as they are still at the learning stage. To write a work of length and quality needs practice. It's better to build up to a long poem, by perfecting writing shorter poems - then you can look to extend the length of your poems.

Any example of writing poetry is a very personal business. The first thought of a poet shouldn't be how his or her work is perceived, but of how they perceive it themselves. If the length is right for your poem, then don't alter it.

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