OK. So I have had a dry spell lately... not turning out much of anything and usually the best way for me to be inspired is to read some decent poems.

Unfortunately... I cannot seem to find much of that anywhere on dA.

I'm not saying that there are NO good writers here... or that I am particularly good... but seriously... if you can't even read through your poem/story to check for misspellings or horrific typos... then what makes you think that ANYONE wants to read it?

For example:
In a haiku, someone wrote the word "raindow" instead of RAINBOW... if he were in second grade and hand-writing this poem I could MAYBE understand, but really... if 10% of your poem is misspelled... you shouldn't have posted it.

another example: "smoke buns my eyes"

My eyes have yet to bun from anything.

Also...
How many poems about bleeding tears, crying blood, or any other weird, desperately cliche, emo references to cutting can possibly exist on dA?
A fucking million and counting.

OK so you are 15. OK so your parents don't get you. OK so you want attention.

Try thinking a little.

I thought it was against the rules to refer to
hurting yourself in literature on this site... I guess the people who are supposed to be watching out for this sort of thing can't even bring themselves to suffer through one of those crappy poems. I don't blame them.

Another gripe about poems and stories lately... is the use of slang. OK, so a poem technically has no rules, as a friend of mine constantly reminds me, but "gunna" "ima" "ill" "hafta" and any other ridiculous substitution just makes you look uneducated.

Lastly... blatant plagiarism. Last year I read a poem that took an entire verse from a song with no citation or recognition of the original author. When I called the author out... she insisted that she'd written it and had never heard of the song. Either she was a liar and a thief or I had the honor of conversing with Billy Joel, the 17 year old Canadian girl. Unfortunately, I believe it was the former. I haven't seen anything else quite as obvious, but I do see lines and phrases placed at random. It's just tacky... again, if you can't write something for yourself why even bother at all? No one is FORCING you to write a poem.

I might sound stuck up, but I would really like to enjoy some poetry on this site rather than have to sort through troves of garbage only to become more and more frustrated with deviant art. There are individual groups that feature poetry, but I would certainly like to see it acknowledged on the front page... it is much too rare to see a poem as a daily deviation.

Here's hoping!