Tips On Writing Poetry! Poetry Writing Tips By John Hewitt A poem with Love in the title (or Destiny, Hate, or other HUGE themes) already has two strikes against it (and I like love poems). One reason that people write poetry is because they have strong emotions that they want to release. That is a great reason to write! The problem is that a strong theme like love or hate has already had millions of poems written about it. Millions, in this case, is not an exaggeration. If you attempt to write a poem explaining love or another major emotion or theme, your will be walking a well-traveled path. It will be hard to distinguish yourself from what has come before you. Robert Frost made the road less traveled a lasting metaphor, and in this case it applies perfectly to poetry. There is no reason not to write about love and hate and destiny. These fundamental human themes will stretch on long after we are gone. The key is to develop the theme in a way that has never been written before. This may sound daunting, but it is actually quite simple. When you write poetry about a major theme, the roots of the poem should be in your experience. Tell your story. Love may be a difficult title for a poem, but The Way She Looked at Me Last Friday could easily be the title of a love poem I would want to read. The theme remains the same, but the path is more distinct. I rarely set out to write a poem about a particular subject. I write what comes to me without planning. This is not the only way to write a poem. Many poets know exactly what they want to write about before they put anything on the page. My method, however, means that I almost never start with a title. Picking the title is generally my final task. In this way, I feel like I have a much better grasp on what the poem is about and how I want the title to reflect that. To me, the title of a poem is like the door to a room. It is the first impression that you get, even before entering. It influences whatever comes after. Still, a large and forbidding door can lead to a comfortable room and a beautiful door can lead to a dungeon. Titles are the same way. A title can provide reinforcement or contrast. For an example, let me take the most overused poem in the history of poetry. Roses are red Violets are blue Sugar is sweet And so are you Now go back and read the poem, but imagine it had one of the following titles: To My Love Things I Never Wanted to Say The Last Thing She Read Code Talker Each different title transforms the poem. Yes, the poem still stinks, but the meaning of the words must now be considered in their new context. The poem’s attitude and theme change under the influence of the title. This is why a major theme should not be the focus of your title. If we stick with the metaphor of a title being like a door, then the title Love is a sixty-foot high shocking pink door covered in roses. It is going to be hard to create a room that can match a door like that. In the end though, the choice of title is up to you. Charles Bukowski used Love in the title of a poem, but the full title, Love is a Dog from Hell, certainly knocked the roses off the door. If you think your poem lives up to the name, call it whatever you want. The bigger your point, the more important the details are. Many poets choose to write poetry for political, social or philosophical reasons. These poets have a specific point-of-view that they want to express. There is nothing wrong with writing poetry to express a viewpoint, but I have found it often results in poetry I have no interest in reading. I do not want to be told that the genocide in Sudan is deadly and awful. I already know that it is. I do not want to be told that child abuse is terrible and hurtful. I already know that it is. I know that war is terrible and I know that it is sometimes necessary. I know that people can be hurtful and they can be kind. Most people understand these things. I am not telling you what you can or cannot choose as a subject. Write about Sudan. Write about child abuse. Write about war. Write about cruel people or happy people. I am willing to read a poem on just about any subject. The key is to focus on the details, not the general point. The poem will fly or plummet based on the details. If you want to tell a story about a war, focus on a single moment, person, or visual. Dig into the details of your subject. I do not want to read a poem that tells me war is bad, but I might be interested in a poem about a truck that has survived a war – a poem that describes the dents, the scratches, the burn marks on the surface of the truck and how each mark got there. Those are the details of a poem. The point of a poem is usually expressed best when it goes unstated and readers draw their own conclusions. The key is that no matter what the subject of a poem is, great or small, the goal of the poet should be to make every part of that poem as interesting to the reader as the subject is to the writer. Blanket statements can kill a poem. The same is true of overly obvious or overblown images. Often, when people think they are being dramatic, they are being melodramatic. This is another case of focusing on the subject rather than the details. When developing an image, make it a goal to veer away from emotional descriptions and look for literal descriptions that match the emotion. Compare these two lines from my hypothetical war-torn truck poem. The angry bullet hole was dark and frightening An irregular circle burn surrounded a bullet hole close to the driver’s door While I am not claiming either line is art, the first image aims for an emotional effect and (I think) fails. The second line keeps emotion from the overt description, but demonstrates the menace involved. I am not saying to keep emotion out of your poetry, just be mindful that your readers would rather feel something on their own than be told to feel something. That said, there is no doubt the second line carries emotion. The words burn and irregular evoke negative emotions and the location of the bullet demonstrates the possible consequences of the shot. The line is more subtle, but it still creates an emotional effect. Writing a poem that sets out to express a particular idea or opinion is difficult and often unnecessary. You already have a point-of-view, and it will come out in your poetry. You do not have to set out to tell how you feel or what you want people to understand. If it is inside you, it will show up in your poetry. All you have to do is keep writing. Say what you want to say and let your readers decide what it means. Most beginning poets spend too much time thinking about the intentions or themes of their poems. There are many different approaches to writing poetry. Some poets write highly structured poems. Some poets write poems about very specific subjects and have definitive goals about what they want their poem to do. While these approaches can produce great poems, I do not recommend them for beginning poets. Young poets and those writing poetry for the first time often become frustrated because they cannot seem to say what they want to say. Many experienced poets have the same problem. Self-expression is not an easy task. The task becomes even harder when you start out with very specific goals or constraints. Writing a great sonnet is not easy. Writing a great villanelle is even harder. That does not mean you should not try, but do not expect immediate success and do not constrain yourself even further by deciding in advance exactly what to say. You can sit down with a topic in mind. If you want to write about a certain landscape or situation, use that as a starting point. If it does not work, however, do not force it. Sometimes the poem you really want to write is sitting in the back of your mind, waiting for you to get out of its way. This may seem to be the antithesis of the advice at the top of the page, but it must to be said before we can discuss the meat of my statement, which is that you need to feel free to write exactly what is on your mind. If you want to write about basset hounds or aluminum cans, you should write about them and say what you have to say. You may create a great poem or you may not. Not every poem you write will be great. No one writes perfectly. Even Shakespeare had off days. Sometimes a poem will shift topics as you write it. Follow the new direction. The new direction may end up fitting your original theme in a way you did not expect, or you may decide to discard the first part of your poem to make way for the new thoughts. You may even find that the first part was right after all and what follows does not work. Whatever the situation, follow the direction a poem takes. You can always rewrite later. Do not get trapped by worrying about whether a poem “makes sense”. If, when you finish, the poem feels right to you, then you have done what you needed to do. Feel satisfied with that. If you do not like the way the poem turned out, either rewrite it or write another poem. Do not expect perfection with every attempt. At some point, if you are brave enough to let the world see your poems, you will discover that your readers do not recognize all the themes you intended for your poem and all the points you tried to make. They will also see things in your poem that you never intended. You need to accept that people can have different views about the same poem. One of the great truths in creative writing is that a writer lacks the perspective to judge his or her own work. When you read your own poem, story, or any other piece of creative writing, you bring to it every thought that was in your head at the time you wrote it. When others read your work, they see the words on the page, not the thoughts you put behind the words. Your readers will also bring to your poem everything that is in their own head. Their interpretation of your poem can be valid, even if it does not agree with your interpretation. Do not spend your time worrying about other people’s interpretations of your poetry. There will always be a difference between your intentions and other people’s interpretations. Say what you have to say. If people ask you what your poem means, feel free to tell them what was on your mind. If they try to tell you what they think your poem means, listen carefully. You do not have to agree with them, and you do not have to change anything about the way you write just because you think they got it wrong. Give their interpretation some thought and see if you think it is valid. If you do not, that is fine. Perspective is a wonderful thing. The more you have, the more you can use. Feel free to write a bad poem One of the most severe problems poets face is perfectionism. Too many poets and aspiring poets feel they have to write a great poem every time they write a poem. They get frustrated when something doesn’t work or they don’t bother to write at all because they just don’t feel ‘inspired’. This sort of thinking destroys creativity. It stops many poets, and many other writers, from even putting the first word on the page. Poetic perfection is a great goal, but a terrible standard. You aren’t going to produce a great poem every time you sit down to write. You may go for days or weeks without producing anything that you feel is good enough. It can be frustrating, but it shouldn’t be defeating. Writing bad poetry is simply a part of writing poetry. Part of this poetry perfectionism affliction comes from elementary and high school when young people take English classes with poetry assignments. Turning a poem in for a grade is always a dangerous thing. You are giving someone else the right to serve as absolute judge over your work, and in elementary or high school there isn’t much you can do about it. A class assignment is a class assignment. Sadly, this destroys many potential poets before they even get started. One bad grade on a poetry assignment can convince someone that they have no talent, when the truth is that any good poet can write a bad poem, especially when trying to conform to someone else’s assignment. While I strongly support teaching poetry to young students, I am not a fan of grading poetry, especially at that level. It has the exact opposite of the intended effect. Instead of encouraging young students to embrace poetry, it discourages many of them. Writing a good poem is hard, and it is even harder if your first poem comes back with a C minus written across the top. Wherever you are at in your poetry writing now, you should feel free to shake off poetic perfectionism. Allow yourself to write a bad poem. Allow yourself to write ten in a row or twenty or thirty. Writing poetry is a skill, and people improve when they allow themselves to make mistakes and learn from them. A poet who writes a good poem every time may be incapable of writing a great poem, just because they haven’t allowed themselves to take enough risks. Think of every bad poem you write as a step toward the next good poem. If you keep working at it, sooner or later the good poetry will flow. From there, you might even reach the great poetry. If not, at least you wrote a poem, and that’s a pretty good way to spend your time. Develop your voice. Get comfortable with how you write. Over the years, I have found many poets and writers I wanted to incorporate into my writing. Early on, I was a big fan of Lawrence Ferlinghetti.In college, I grew to admire Ai. I have been a big fan of Charles Bukowskifor years and more recently I have been reading Tony Hoagland.On the fiction side, I have moved through the influences of John Irving, Bret Easton Ellis, Anne Tyler, Walker Percy, Jim Thompson and W. Somerset Maugham to name a few. As much as these people influence my writing, however, I don’t write like any of them. I can see some elements of each in my writing, a Ferlinghetti-like flight of fancy or a Percy-influenced malaise for example. Still, as my voice has developed (and it is still developing) I have learned to incorporate rather than emulate. While pieces of my writing may echo that of other writers, I have my own system of expression and my own style. There is no quick route to developing your own writing style. The key is to keep writing. Write your way through the bad moments and the cheap emulations. Don’t make a conscious effort to write like someone else, no matter how much you admire their writing. Be honest with yourself. Whatever else you do, keep writing, and then write some more. As you keep writing, you will grow more confident in your style. This isn’t a process that takes a day or a week; it is the work of a lifetime of writing. Your voice will evolve long after you have stopped worrying about developing your voice – if you keep writing. Once you become comfortable with your voice, you won’t be as susceptible to outside influences. You can learn from a poet without copying that poet. You can add the best of other people’s influences to your style. There is value in reading and learning from great poets and great writers. Just as musicians incorporate new sounds and styles, so can poets and writers. Just remember that your voice is the influence that matters most. Don’t explain everything. One of the key differences between poetry and prose is exposition. The nature of prose is expository. The prose writer tells a story. Generally speaking, the story progresses along logical lines as the reader discovers more and more about the subject and the plot. In order for this to happen, the writer must explain elements of the story so that the reader can follow the action and make sense of it all. Poetry does not have to be expository. A poet can explain, but it isn’t necessary to the form and in many cases explanation can be a detriment. One of the beauties of poetry is that a poet can and should cut out everything that isn’t essential. The reader should bring their own experiences into a poem, and the more a poet tries to explain, the less the reader can decide for themselves. There is also a danger in saying too little. What starts as concise can become vague. There is a path that each poet must navigate between what should be cut and what must remain. It is a path that each poet must determine on their own. Some poets write as if they are telling stories, and others write as if they are painting an image. Neither is wrong. When you edit your poetry, go through each line and ask yourself if it is both necessary and interesting. Is it a line that the reader will remember, or does it merely serve to move the reader into the next moment? If the line is not necessary or interesting, it should either be cut or rewritten. Don’t waste the time and effort of your reader and don’t try to control their experience. Say what you want to say, but don’t tell your reader what to think about your poem. Allow them to think what they want, even though their interpretation may differ from your intention. The poem is not the poet. Once created and brought into the world, the poem stands only on its own. Unlike a college text or a how-to article, a poem is not created to explain. It is created to involve. Allow the reader to determine their own involvement. Courtesy to PoeWar.com