Back in high school, we had a poem assignment. Knowing very little about poetry, I wrote a bunch of statements that could just barely be considered related top each other, with a lot of help from a thesaurus. Anyway, my teacher liked my poem so much that she entered it in a regional contest and it won. Then, I got called to come to an auditorium full of school board members and teachers and read the poem aloud. Then a bunch of those teachers came to shake my hand and offer their interpretations of my poem.

Fast forward to two years after I graduate, I get an email from my old teacher asking me to give her statement about writing good poems that she could share with her class. I send back "write a bunch of pseudo-deep observations, use a thesaurus, and never use a word more than once, unless it's in the title."

She never replied.