03-31-2012, 05:41 AM
"Show, don't tell" is as over-dispensed as Ritalin, in this you are absolutely correct. That is not to say that it is wrong, just misused and oft quoted by those who have not understood it in the first place. It's perhaps better to say "infer, don't prescribe". People assume that "show" means "use images" and "tell" means "use words", which is a pretty difficult distinction to make when you're writing pictures with words.
Depending on the purpose of the poem, too much "showing" can be just plain irritating -- if you're writing a light, humorous piece, you usually want people to understand it immediately, so making them go back and decipher/interpret/infer on their own is going to be counterproductive. However, in many other kinds of poetry and indeed other texts (not just the written ones), I find it more effective to give people multiple pathways into and through, so that they may wander where they please. The road not taken, and all that
Depending on the purpose of the poem, too much "showing" can be just plain irritating -- if you're writing a light, humorous piece, you usually want people to understand it immediately, so making them go back and decipher/interpret/infer on their own is going to be counterproductive. However, in many other kinds of poetry and indeed other texts (not just the written ones), I find it more effective to give people multiple pathways into and through, so that they may wander where they please. The road not taken, and all that
It could be worse