To many, poetry isn’t a professional form of writing. And what’s worse is the greater level of subjectivity in what counts as good poetry, a grey area that doesn’t apply as much to prose. But there’s one (generally accepted) element of good poetry that has helped me develop my skills as a writer: the ability to vivify the mundane.

If you’ve grown sick of seeing flowery language in non-poetic works time and time again, I feel the same way — purple prose is a travesty. 

I prefer keeping things concise, and this has nothing to do with laziness. In fact, I believe writing shorter pieces can be more challenging than writing longer ones. Writing a decent 100-word poem can sometimes take me hours.

Conciseness has been a great companion to my passion for poetic diction. For the sake of my readers, I strive to remove the hazard of creating an excessively ornate mess. When descriptiveness gets out of hand, it makes writing convoluted and hard to wade through.

A poem of mine that best exemplifies the concept of concise descriptiveness is “Baiting Nemo,” a piece that has been published in the University of Toronto’s Crossing Boundaries. A word of warning: You need some familiarity with poker jargon to understand this poem! To see how I’ve applied the same concept to prose, see this short profile I wrote on Paul McCartney.

As long as a writing piece provides enough detail, succinct writing is often effective.