Goad27 Jan 2004

Drumrgirl30, step outside of yourself and consider: When a child whines, why does it whine? Because it feels an emotion or desire or hurt that is extremely important to it, and it feels a strong urge to communicate that emotion to others. And how do people respond to whining children? Do they ever respond positively? Do you?

Why is this? -- it's because learning more constructive responses to pain than whining is an important part of development. As true in poetry, whatever level you're at, as life.

Whining won't ever get you a positive response from fellow poetry writers, any more than whining works in life. It may garner you accolades from your fellow angst-ridden teenagers, but your better off communicating with them in a blog, not here. Here you will just be mocked. Why? again, consider life. What's the best way to quickly train a child not to whine? Mockery and derision. Perhaps cruel, but it works.

This does not mean it is forbidden to express personal pain in poetry. Au contraire. We're all gluttons for creatively expressed deep down trauma hound pain. We simply have more sophisticated tastes in our consumption of angst than the sound of a whining child. This isn't snobbery, but the built-in instinctive human reaction to whining.