Poets: How do you write poetry?

Cafe Society
1

It has come to my attention that, to complete my degree, I’m going to have to take a class on beginning poetry writing. I’m taking the beginning fiction writing class now and, if the poetry writing class is similar, it’ll be a workshop class, with no instruction or advice as to how one crafts a poem. So, I figure, since I’m so bad at writing poetry, I should work on it a bit before I take the class (probably next semester), so I don’t embarrass myself/fail.

I admit it: I can’t write a (good) poem to save my life. I understand (I think) that a poem is supposed to be a maximum of emotion in a minimum of space. In other words, word choice in poetry is much more important than word choice in prose. Not only that, but every punctuation mark and space must also have an excuse for existing, so that every component of the poem is working toward the goal of creating an emotion in the reader.

If I’m wrong about what I think a poem is, tell me.

Now, when I try to write a poem, I try to choose every word carefully with the goal of expressing what I’m feeling. The product, however, always ends up looking emotionless, dry, and technical.

I write poetry like Lt. Cmdr. Data!

I don’t have the same problem with prose. I can usually stir up an emotion or two there if I try hard enough, and my word choice usually seems right. But, when I read a poem I’ve attempted to write, it just reads unnaturally, like I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. And I don’t, I guess. Verse must just be so different from prose that I can’t translate what I can do in prose over to verse.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

2

I have a tendency to just write down whatever’s in my head and put it onto paper, which usually ends up being between nine and seventeen lines and contains a few strange plays on words.

A good friend has a similar philosophy – as a jazz musician, he just writes down random words. It doesn’t really make sense, but it’s fairly meaningful in its own way.

3

Usually, when I write a poem, it’s because I have to. Not like an assignment or anything; more like if I don’t write it, I’ll explode.

Other times, I watch people, write down snippets of what I’m thinking, and use the phrases as titles of poems.

4

Poorly.

However, they say you spend a week writing a poem and a year revising it. “They” being a friend of mine who is a writer by profession.

5

I kind of free associate; strings of words that bubble up when I’m thinking of a particular thing. Then I kind of go through and refine: amplify words or images that seem strong; strike out stuff that seems vague, or cliche, or confusing, or just wrong; try to smoothe the gaps initially created by this first editing pass. I kind of just keep combing through it till any spots of tension are smoothed.

6

Writing poetry is a discipline. Free verse, which intuitively seems to be likely to be much easier, is, in fact much harder, if it matters at all how good it is.

Forms (classical and modern) are not limits; they are frameworks. They do part of your job for you, providing a structure to guide you in your work. Use them. Try Heroic Couplets. Two lines, rhymed, in iambic pentameter. Then try other rhyme schemes. ABCB is very musical. ABBA is a natural lead in for a change in rhyme, on a verse level. That’s why it works so well in the Sonnet.

Try meter with prose, for a while. Just to get a feel for it. English is a very iambic language, for the most part. Dactyls and Anapests have a very distinctive feel to them, even in prose.

Riding on war horses galloping onward!

The change in meter does something to bring the reader to the point where he feels the horses galloping. Use it in your poetry, even if you don’t use a constant meter, or regular rhyme. Free verse should be carefully analyzed for it’s meter, and perhaps adjusted for emotional impact.

Now write the story you want to tell. Start in the beginning, the place and time you want the reader to be when the story starts. The thing that you want to be the symbol of that story should be there. The emotion that was there before the story should be there too. Then the action or discovery that starts the event that this poem is about. Then the protagonist or observer must be considered, perhaps described, or perhaps to speak. Then the revelation stated in the simplest possible terms. This is the thing that the poem exists to accomplish. It should be short, and if it is long, it must be very sure in its progression. It can be specific or generalized, but it cannot be vague. And then the change is shown, hopefully that change will have happened to the reader as well.

In a Station of the Metro
THE apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

Ezra Pound.
This one has all these things, and even uses its title as a portion of the poem.

Haiku is a great training ground for poets. When you have strict limits, and a very demanding goal, it makes you very careful of your choices.

When you change your meter, you will stop the reader at that verbal element. Don’t do it over trivia. You have made this the important part of the verse, so it needs to have the most important part of the message in it. When you stop a sentence in the middle of a line, it has to be for a reason, not because that is where you ran out of sentence. It is going to lead the reader into the next sentence without a pause. If the thought is not constructed that way, you loose the reader.

Rhyme is very useful, especially when you use it “wrong.” Interior rhyme, repeated, or varied rhyme scheme, or a missing rhyme are very powerful tools. But they will make a trivial message memorably trivial, as well.

Don’t write limericks. They are extraordinarily powerful, and historically suffused with irreverent silliness. You probably are not the great poet who can save the limerick from its current banal state.

A prose paragraph broken up into breath groups is not a poem. A poem is word picture of something that the poet saw, or did or was, and when you read it, you see, or do, or are the same thing, or at least you feel like it. Good ones echo in you mind for the rest of your life.

Tris

7

Well said, Tris. Hopefully, you’re beginning poetry writing class will help you sort out some of your problems. I would be very wary of free-verse poetry at this point.

Let me start with technical considerations, since those are easier to explain,.

For me, meter is one of the most important technical considerations of poetry, whether free or formal verse. Having a good ear for meter not only helps you in poetry, but it immensely helps you in prose writing as well. Nabakov also stands out for me as a prose writer with an incredibly well-tuned poetic ear. First, learn to understand meter. (You will no doubt learn this in class.) Learn what an iamb, trochee, dactyl, anapest, spondee, etc. are. Listern to how they sound and what kind of “backbeat” they form in your poetry. Read Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” and you will hear what an iambic meter sounds like. This poem is particularly strict in its meter, perfect to form the quiet, lulling “backbeat” for the words.

Second, the sounds of the words themselves are important, of course. Not just rhyme, but consonance, assonance and alliteration. Read, read, and read more poetry and pay attention to how authors apply these effects. Listen to the broad, open “ohs” in the start of the aforementioned Frost poem. But be careful not to overuse it as well.

Writing poetry is partly being a musical conductor. Besides image and content, you have to establish mood and feeling through rhythm and sound. Good free-verse poets do this as well.

On to the creative side. That’s a bit harder to explain. In poetry I look for several things. One is creative, lasting imagery. It needn’t be flowery. In fact, it’s the simple, unexpected images that cling to my memory the most. Tris’s Pound example is excellent. “In a Station of the Metro/The apparation of these faces in a crowd/Petals on a wet, black bough.” Wow. Beautiful. And listen to the sounds and rhythm here. Notice how the last line has such a nice finality. The monosyllables of “wet, black bough” slow the poem down to a halt. The near-rhyme of “bough/crowd”, the “petals/wet” sounds. Just gorgeous. And, no, I don’t think any of these are coincidences. They’re fully intended to be there.

Direct, unexpected, simple imagery is powerful. Avoid trite sentimentalizaiton. This is the most difficult thing for me, in my poetry - where does one cross the line from sentiment to sentimentality? When is one trying to make a real societal critique and when is one sounding like an angst-ridden teenager? It is difficult.

I find the first rule of writing applies even more to poetry. Write and rewrite, rewrite, rewrite… Work out that first impulse. Get some basic ideas down for imagery and tone and meter. At least that’s how I start. Then I start crossing things out. Finding better words. Twisting and bending the meter until the poem starts to take shape. Then put it away for a few days. Reread it with fresh eyes and continue reworking it.

So basically, read up on the mechanics of poetry, read TONS of poetry, concentrate on how poets use imagery, rhythm, sound, tone, symbolism, etc… and apply that to your own ideas. Don’t get too crazy on symbolism, though. Everything in your poem needn’t stand for something. Some people approach poems as puzzles. Poems should not need to be approached as enigmas.

Oh, and to add to these scattered thoughts, write about what you know. My favorite (and my professor’s) favorite poems in college were ones I wrote simply about my neighborhood, life in the city, the ritual of baseball, etc. Subjects for poetry are everywhere. Give it good imagery, make it a bit personal, but universal enough to be enjoyed and understood by others. But speak in a voice which is comfortable and natural for you.

Easy, eh? :slight_smile:

(BTW, I wouldn’t necessarily characterize poetry as maximum emotion in minimum space. That is a part of it, but hardly the whole.)

8

Um, obviously the “you’re [sic]” in the second sentence refers to Loopus not Tris.

9

I agree totally with what puly said about metre, rhyme, etc - so I’ll not add to discussions about that! I will emphasise though, that it often helps to USE the restrictions of metre and rhythm as a first structure.

My best advice would be, as with all writing - stick to what you know. I bet your best prose is in this vein, or you’ve started to associate with common themes or concepts. For instance, my best work is about feelings of shallow infatuation with an unobtainable person.

The only other point I’d make would be about editing and revision. When ‘forced’ (at College) to write about set topics or in set styles, the only way I could get anything decent out was through jotting down what I wanted in semi-prose and then constructing it afterwards. Now, as I write for pleasure, I tend to put down a fairly complete poem first time, then manipulate words and phrases to get the effect I want.

By the way, my course (in the UK), whilst encouraging us to write, placed much more attention on a reflection of the writing. The university I work for now has the same approach. The thing is, you’ll not be great at every style and form, but an accompanying paper showing that you understand it and can identify the areas of difficulty is much more relevant.

Hope this helps. Have fun and enjoy!

J

10

I think pulykamell and triskadecamus give great advice – let me echo the necessity of reading lots and lots of poetry, and the necessity of editing. In fact, I find that editing is the most fun part of writing the poem.

(Moreover, if you ask me, most awful poetry is awful because the poet has just vomited words onto a page and left them where they fell – no! You must edit! Poetry is not a performance art.)

Don’t be so concerned with getting everything perfectly the first time you put pen to paper. You’re right that there is a greater economy of language with poetry as opposed to the other writing media, but that doesn’t mean that you have to choose the right words in the first draft.

If you’re at a loss as to what to write about…I find that what my Latin professor called “liminal moments” are great inspiration for poems – the moments when you feel you (or someone else, or the world, etc.) have crossed some kind of threshold from one state of being to another.

The visual setup of the poem – how you break the words into lines, into stanzas…what kinds of margins you use…the shape of the poem (short with long lines vs. long with short lines) – all contribute to the effect and meaning of the poem. Try it sometime with someone else’s poem you really like: type it up and then play around with its setup. You can also add layers of meaning and discovery to a poem by manipulating its layout (e.g., choosing to end each line with words that, when strung together, form a sentence).

If you’re concerned with how to punctuate, don’t. Use no punctuation. Play with spacing to indicate pauses in breath or thought.
Finally, I’ve found that I can’t set aside a time to write a poem…I can’t force inspiration like that. But talking long walks or long drives really gets the inspiration bubbling.

11

a lot of poets
these days
write prose
but they insert line-breaks
randomly
into their sentences.
that’s not poetry:
it’s shit.

12

jjiimm, a wise one,
speaks true words.
Beware the lure
of faux poem turds.

13

Actually, jjiimm, there’s this wonderful collection of “found poetry” that someone came up with – argh, I can’t remember what it’s called – but basically, they took excerpts of the Clinton-Lewinsky testemony, broke up into fragments and Penguin published it (knowing full-well what it was, of course.) It was amazing how some of the “poems” looked like wannabe-modern free-verse poetry! Oh, I wish I could quote one to you, but I don’t have the book.

Incidentally, I just wanted to add one more point: remember, most poetry (with the notable exception of “concrete” poetry, and some of the more abstract modern genera) is meant to be read aloud. Poetry should be a vocal performance. When reading other’s works, don’t be shy. Read it aloud. Say your own poems aloud and really listen to the sounds. Not all poets are good readers of their own work, but I think it is extremely helpful to read your poems out loud.

14

I write a lot of poetry. In fact for a while I was so prolific that my friends are really pushing me to getting it published.

If you want an easy to do poem, I would suggest trying a Dadaist poem. Get a newspaper or magazine that has a fairly long article. Cut out words in the article (make sure to put articles and clauses attached to the nouns, also make sure to have enough words). And then randomly draw them out and make a poem. The beauty of a Dadaist poem is that it shouldn’t make too much sense. I have found that after seeing it on paper you can easily put it into a much more workable piece of literature with minor adjustments. Also, if you want to do it a lot easier you can spread it into three categories: subjects, verbs, and predicates (which include any clause that you have.

When I am in for real writing though I sit down and typically labor anywhere from 10 minutes to several hours over a single poem. Even then I am not necessarily finished with it. I tend to find that the rhythm is significantly more important than the rhyming scheme if you choose to use it. If your poetry class has specific forms of poetry to use then you will have to fall into those guidelines. For example, iambic pentameter (yawn city), sonatas, etc. I have been told that my poetry sounds “shakespearean” and “victorian” so I must fall into that type of category subconsciously.

Anyway, assuming you are going relatively free form, you should find a rhythm for the poem but not necessarily stick to it. Haiku are good practice but not typically long enough for good expressive work. You could try writing a series of Haiku that all have the same subject matter and string them along as one longer poem. That is something that I do sometimes.

Ok, now for how I write poems for real. I typically sit down and one verse tends to come very naturally to me. I don’t necessarily think about it much and just write. I only write one verse at a time. If I am stuck I randomly pick numbers for syllables per line and try to stay away from simple patterns (don’t want a poem to be 5,7,7,5,7,7,5,7,7,5 or anything that rote… more like 9,5,4,7,6). If I then deem it necessary for a rhyme scheme I decide which ending syllables or even portions of a line I want to rhyme. In the 9,5,4,7,6 example I could have the last syllable of 9 and 6 rhyme and the last syllable of 4 and the first syllable of 7 rhyme. And if I want to make a larger internal relationship have all the 5’s rhyme with eachother… or even every other 5 rhyme with eachother. Ta Da. You now have a structure for your poem that is relatively original. Now for the hard part, the concept. I tend to write about what I am thinking or feeling. I tend to write best when I am either at a high or low emotionally. Thank the gods for bipolar disorder… LOL well I guess I would have to be bipolar to claim that one. Anyway, I will then write about how I am feeling with the given scheme above but not directly. On a side note, I consider forced rhymes to be rhymes as well. I won’t do the following:
9 Sometimes I feel bad because things suck
5 I hate my mother
4 My father too
7 Shoes stink when people don’t wash
6 Just like my brother, Chuck.

See, that is all superficial. There isn’t anything to it because it doesn’t cause you to think. If I did something closer to the next it would feel more poetic. I will keep an internal rhyme scheme going from the previous.

9 I choke upon the bile (tricky tricky, is bile one or two syllables?)that’s life
5 Wholly it smothers
4 Suffocating
7 Berating, its speach ending
6 Likened unto what’s wise. (tricky tricky, a forced rhyme… notice that the vowel sound is the only thing that is the same rather than the entire ending)

Ta da. So that makes the two together to be as follows:

9 Sometimes I feel bad because things suck
5 I hate my mother
4 My father too
7 Shoes stink when people don’t wash
6 Just like my brother, Chuck.

9 I choke upon the bile that’s life
5 Wholly it smothers
4 Suffocating
7 Berating, its speach ending
6 Likened unto what’s wise.

Since this was just an exercise there really isn’t much point to doing any type of critical interpretation. In the first stanza, the speaker is upset on purely physical things. Poems don’t have to answer the question why, and in my opinion they shouldn’t because that takes away the varied interpretations that make things art.

In the second one, the speaker talks of the lack of influence that the speaker has and is descriptive about what it feels like. There is comparison used without talking of the actual problem and thus it allows for varied interpretation.

Ta Da, You too can be a poet.

15

PS. If I was actually writing what I consider a real poem I would be able to go back and forth and change any parts of the structure while i was writing it. In this example I just came up with something on the fly and only put in a minutes worth of work into it. Typically, I always write poems on paper and scratch out word over word until I get it to have the exact sound I want.

16

Wow. Thanks for the responses, everybody, especially those of you who took the time to write long responses to help me along. I really appreciate it.

I’m going to bookmark this thread and keep looking back to it as I attempt to become, at least, a respectable poet.

Thanks all,
Loopus

17

I just wanted to add that probably the best way to practice writing poetry is to think about what you’re doing. Look around and ask yourself, “How would I write a poem about this?”. This helps you get into the habit of close observation, which needs to come before any of the technical considerations, IMO. This also helps you to write on demand, which you’ll have to do each week, if I remember poetry workshops.

Surgeon General’s Warning: The poems you write like this will probably not be your best work. Hopefully, you’ll feel the need to write a poem at some point, instead of making it an intellectual exercise. Do NOT try to publish “Sestina on a Labor Day Barbecue.”

18

My most useful exercise in writing poetry was speaking extemporaneously in heroic couplets, or in quatrains for as much as an hour at a time, alone, outdoors, where I could almost yell the stuff. I don’t pretend that it is not a blessing that none of it was recorded in any way, and I certainly don’t remember much of it. But it was a very useful exercise for the mind.

Then pick something even harder, like speaking in some complete verse form that requires a complex rhyme scheme. Stretch your vocabulary, and your verbal agility to the extremes. Ideally you should do this while engaging in some martial art, like fencing, or
Aikido. Rock climbing is good, too. Eventually, you will be able to engage in repartee in perfect Elizabethan Sonnets, while you match your verbal barbs with less ephemeral ripostes.

No, really.

Tris