Questions in poems
With the sudden popularity of persona poems, I am also noticing an increase in the use of questions as a lazy device. Rhetorical questions are as old as time, and can be used very effectively, but I think they often fall apart when the questions are addressed to someone who isn't the audience. Often this is someone stated in a persona poem, other times, it is some unnamed "you" who the poet is addressing (or named, like father). The problem is that, instead of a device used to make the listener/reader think about the answer, you are giving information but putting it in a question for some reason that isn't always clear.
So, for example, I write a poem and the first line is "dad, were you thinking about demons when you used to beat me?" I am not asking the audience to contemplate the question itself, I am just using it to tell the audience that my dad beat me***. I see stuff like this in my earlier writing, and I think it is a common beginner mistake that people should work to move past.
A related device would be the "I wonder if..." statement, e.g, "Dad, I wonder if you thought about demons when you used to beat me". This is equally lazy in my opinion.
I think the fix would be something like just saying it: "My dad thought about demons when he used to beat me". However, this is harder, because in this case, "thought about demons" would be the piece of information on which the audience focuses. Therefore, you need to actually have an interesting image there, instead of just the shock of my dad beating me. This is obviously more challenging.
Maybe this makes no sense. Maybe I am becoming a curmudgeon. Give me some examples of questions done well.
***not a true statement. Also, had I thought of it earlier, I would have used "shake me as a baby" instead of "beat me", but I really don't feel like going back now and changing all of my examples.
So, for example, I write a poem and the first line is "dad, were you thinking about demons when you used to beat me?" I am not asking the audience to contemplate the question itself, I am just using it to tell the audience that my dad beat me***. I see stuff like this in my earlier writing, and I think it is a common beginner mistake that people should work to move past.
A related device would be the "I wonder if..." statement, e.g, "Dad, I wonder if you thought about demons when you used to beat me". This is equally lazy in my opinion.
I think the fix would be something like just saying it: "My dad thought about demons when he used to beat me". However, this is harder, because in this case, "thought about demons" would be the piece of information on which the audience focuses. Therefore, you need to actually have an interesting image there, instead of just the shock of my dad beating me. This is obviously more challenging.
Maybe this makes no sense. Maybe I am becoming a curmudgeon. Give me some examples of questions done well.
***not a true statement. Also, had I thought of it earlier, I would have used "shake me as a baby" instead of "beat me", but I really don't feel like going back now and changing all of my examples.