A cliché is simply an overused statement usually in the form of a metaphor or simile. For example: "the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence." This means what other people have will always look better than what you have. [Looking at things this way could make you seem snotty or jealous.] Everybody has probably heard this phrase or the shortened version of "the grass is always greener on the other side" or simply "the grass is always greener." The latter goes to show that this phrase is so overused that a person doesn't even have to finish it for another to understand what they are talking about. This phrase is cliché because everybody knows it, and most are now sick of hearing it.
Go turn on the radio to a popular station. Listen to it all day long. How many times did you hear the most played song? Now listen to that station for a week and you will most likely want to drop kick the radio off a cliff if you hear THAT song one more time! Wouldn't you? People get tired of hearing the same thing over and over again. That's why people change the station when the most popular song ever comes on. It works the same way with anything else: TV shows, movies, video games, phrases, board games, magic tricks, books, etc.
Eventually, these clichés get lost in our mind, since people stop using them and loathe you for using them. The clichés begin to swim around like tadpoles and sooner or later grow into full fledged frogs... umm... they come back. The clichés resurface one day. Sometimes this can be good and sometimes it can be bad. For some people [to go back to the music] that really annoying song from 3 years ago can create nostalgia which brings the listener back to their life three years before whatever is going wrong with their life now. For other people, it may still be that really annoying song from three years ago to which they shudder at the mere mention of the title or the subtle humming of the refrain. Most of the time [back to clichés] you don't do it on purpose. Your brain is a very mystical being... I mean, it's a very powerful organ.
Think of your dreams. If you never have dreams then think of your friends dreams. If you don't have any friends then get off the internet and go out and do something. Think about how crazy dreams can be. Think of the sounds you hear, the sights you see, the smells you smell, the tastes you taste. Think about how real your dreams are. Believe it or not, Mr. Ripley, your brain does all that. It delves deep into its deepest chasms and reveals to you... THE FUTURE... ok, not the future, rather it reveals information that you don't remember you ever knew. Then, one day you are sitting at your computer staring at your AllPoetry homepage, with the TV on in the background. Something sparks your imagination and you begin to piece together little bits of information your subconscious is feeding you. As the little tidbits begin to merge you end up with a poem. You hit the submit button, choose a background, and voila! A Masterpiece...or is it? It could just be a clever arrangement of clichés.
Apparently what I did was take many commonly used phrases or simple ideas and made a poem out of them. Or in other words, I took all the annoying songs and played them back to back.
Yes, your brain is so powerful it can take all the clichés you know and slide them through your arm onto AllPoetry.com. And it does this so secretly that you never even realize it until someone else tells you, via comment. If you're any kind of good writer at all you will step back and look at your poem for what it is and try to fix it... if it's broken. Sometimes people will use clichés on purpose. More often than not, it's better to try and relate directly to your intended audience with metaphors that are drawn from the subject. Yes clichés can be universal, but it's that universal-ality mixed with over-use that made them clichés to begin with. Some people use clichés and don't even realize it. For instance, some of our younger poets here on AllPotry.com might come across what we consider a cliché for the first time and then place that in their poetry. Some people will leave their poem alone, even if they too see the clichés. They do this because the particular poem just flowed out of them. Like a river from it's origin it was natural and they don't want to mess with. And other people are just stubborn. Either they don't care or they don't want to admit their poem hay have a flaw, however small.
My advice is to stay away from clichés unless you can blend them into a piece where they will fit. Try instead to use the subject to come up with some new descriptions which should be relateable to your intended audience via the subject. But if all else fails, take the cliché and morph it so it is not the exact same cliché or so it makes fun of the old cliché. That's my advice.
As for my poem, I'm not going to change it and you can't make me.
Even though I like my poem the way it is, I still respect the person who told me it sounded cliché. After all, he has a right to his opinion. Plus, it was his comment which led me to write this column, which I hope was (the good kind of) educational as well as amusing.
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