Yes, I know it is the holiday season and a time to be charitable, but there are several more things I just have to add to my "things that must go" list. Here goes:
1. Rabid couponers who must post photos of their finds on Facebook whenever they go shopping. There's a reason they call it "extreme couponing." I don't need to see pictures of the rolls of toilet paper you bought or the boxes of macaroni and cheese and hear that you got everything for just $7.59. That's great that you have time on your hands to clip coupons and scan weekly ads for even better deals -- but I really don't care, and I don't want to hear about it.
2. The obligatory Christmas poems with incorrect rhythm. Unless it is freestyle, (read: doesn't have a set pattern and doesn't need to rhyme) a poem needs to have the same rhythm on every line. This is why Shakespeare was and is the master of poetry: his sonnets stuck to a RIGID iambic pentameter and flowed beautifully off the tongue; they were meant to be read aloud. There are way too many Christmas poems (and other holiday poems, for that matter) that just throw sentences together and rhyme the end of the second and fourth lines of the quatrains and call it good. OK, sorry. Please excuse all of the poetry terms there. It just REALLY bugs me when I read a poem out loud and the rhythm is way off.
Actually, that's it for now. Obviously, I read one too many bad Christmas poems this week. :)
Are you thinking of all the poetry submissions you read when you worked here? :)
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