Creative Writing: Poetry

 

What is a poem?

This may seem like a silly question to ask, and at one point, it may have been. However, in the twentieth century, poetry broke from the traditional forms. The predominant form since that time has been free verse. There is even a form without line breaks, called the “prose poem.” So, what is it that makes a poem a poem?

A major element of a poem is density of meaning. Every line in a good poem is packed with metaphorical energy. The concrete imagery, meter, and line breaks contribute to a language that communicates far more than it actually says. Poetry takes the ideas and emotions of the world and puts them into the concrete form of words.

Here is the bottom line: poems are made of words. An epic poem, like Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner, achieves its lofty grandeur through simple words. A haiku derives its simplicity and power from simple words. Perhaps Paul Engle said it best: “Poetry is ordinary language raised to the nth power. Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words.”

 

Common Elements of Poetry

The following is not a comprehensive list of poetic elements; however, it should get you started.

 

Form

If a repeated pattern of syllables or line lengths or rhyme exists, then the poem has some kind of form. If no pattern exists, then the poem is considered “free-form.”

 

Enjambment

Sometimes a poet will decide to break a line in the middle of a sentence. This is called enjambment. Often, this helps the poet to surprise the reader. Other times, poets use enjambment for the sake of rhythm. You can achieve many effects using enjambment. Find a poem that you like, and try rearranging the line breaks (this works best if the poem is not in form). See what kind of effects you can get out of the words!

 

Speaker and Audience

For the purposes of reading a poem, the speaker is the “I” of the poem, and all that you know about that “I” is what the poem tells you. Sometimes the speaker will never refer to himself as “I,” but there is still a speaker.

If there is a speaker, then there must be a listener. When reading or writing a poem, ask why and to whom the speaker is talking. Sometimes the listener is the reader, as if the reader was walking by the speaker and overheard the speaker musing out loud. However, it is possible for the speaker and listener to be the same person.

 

Simile and Metaphor

A simile is a comparison between unlike things that uses “like” or “as”: “My love is like a red, red rose.” “This guitar is like the one Van Halen played” is not a simile because it compares a guitar to a guitar: two like objects. The first example is a simile because a person is not a rose.

Metaphors are simply comparisons between two unlike things that do not use “like” or “as.” For example, in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” T. S. Eliot describes the actions of the fog using words that are often associated with cats. The fog is not actually a giant yellow cat, but the image of the cat makes the fog a significant detail and gives it interest for the reader. Eliot creates what is called an extended metaphor by stretching the metaphor over several lines, allowing him to more fully explore the implications of the comparison.

 

Meter

Poets have the use of many different kinds of meter. Blank verse is the most important to know. Blank verse is what is called “iambic pentameter.” Broken down, that means five pairs of syllables: the first of each pair is unstressed, and the second is stressed. “Penta” means five, and an “iamb” is the unstressed/stressed pair. The “meter” in “pentameter” just means that the pattern of five iambs is repeated every line: it is a meter. Most sonnets are in iambic pentameter.

A “trochee” is the opposite of an “iamb,” and it is possible to write in “trochaic pentameter.” Blank verse can also be changed up by using “spondees” (two stressed syllables) and “pyrrhic feet” (two unstressed syllables). There are many other possibilities and types of meter, but these are enough for a start.

 

Writing a Poem

 Writing a poem is hard. So, let’s start out with some humor from Dinosaur Comics:

This comic, while funny, actually demonstrates one of the most important things to remember about poetry: concrete imagery. The imagery in panel three is so descriptive and solid that you can visualize the scene, which actually evokes a feeling. The “poem” in panel five is, for the most part, not concretely descriptive.

Poets often want to express esoteric or profound ideas or feelings, so they just write down exactly what they mean. Most of the time that does not work, for, as many people have observed, poetry most often means what it does not say.

That said, one of the best ways to write a poem is to just write without worrying about whether what you are writing is good or bad. This is called “free-writing.” It requires you to temporarily suspend your internal critics in order to get something down on the page. The hard work of revision comes later.

Even if you are trying to write a poem in form, free-writing is useful. It works like brainstorming a paper. You don’t use everything, but perhaps you hit on a phrase that is exactly what your poem has been waiting for.

When you free-write, try to think about concrete images. Your ideas will develop most effectively through the metaphors that concrete images suggest. Most importantly, just sit down and write. Poems are not made of ideas; poems are made of words. So get those ideas into words!

 

Process of Revision

 Once again, let’s see what Dinosaur Comics has to say:

Once you have written a poem, you must begin the long, often painful process of revision. In this process, you are going to have to change your poem, often quite a bit. It can be hard to change something that you worked so hard to create, but revision is vital to the writing process.

When talking about a day spent revising one of his poems, Oscar Wilde reportedly said, “I spent all morning putting in a comma. And then I spent all afternoon taking it out.” While this is probably a bit of an exaggeration, it illustrates the idea that you must pay close attention to every word and piece of punctuation in your poem. The difference between a good word and the right word is the difference between shocking yourself on a doorknob and getting struck by lightning.

However, before you get down to the leaves on the trees, think about the forest. In other words, think big:

• Does the poem work?
• Why does it work, or why not?
• What about it is most effective?
• What about it is least effective?
• What is the poem about?

Remember that after the first draft, the point isn’t what you want the poem to say anymore. The point of revision is to find out what the poem actually says. Think about it as archaeology. You are excavating your poem, finding out what shape it has, how heavy it is, and what it is.

Bottom line, you have to find what works for the poem. Try writing additions. Try rewriting a stanza or a line. Pick a particularly good line and use it as the starting line for another poem. See what happens when you take out a line or eliminate an idea. But don’t throw anything away. You’ll want to be able to return to an earlier version of your poem if you need to.

 

Three exercises in poem writing

Poetry is like everything else: some people have more natural talent for it than others, but everyone needs to practice to become good at it. These are just some possible exercises to get you started.

 

The Descriptive Poem

Find some place or thing to describe. Try to avoid doing this exercise with people, because when writing about a person it is very easy to slip into abstract descriptions that are meaningless in the context of poetry. When writing about your subject, avoid abstractions like “beautiful,” “good,” “ugly,” and “happy.” Use descriptions that contribute to the character of the place or object. The windowsill isn’t just red; it is warped and peeling. The journal isn’t just on the nightstand; it is unwrinkled but covered in dust.

 

Five Similes

This one is very simple. Just write five similes. It doesn’t matter what they are.  Just start writing them:

• Fingers crooked like the branches of a tree.
• A ballroom as empty as a looted treasure chest.

Now, think about the implications of your comparisons:

• If the ballroom is like a looted treasure chest, then something valuable was inside of it at one point.
• What was the treasure?
• Who took the treasure?

Perhaps one of your similes will fire your imagination enough to write a poem!

 

Childhood Memory

Write a poem about a childhood memory. The great thing about this is that the memory has already changed in your mind, so you don’t have to even try to stick to “the facts.” If you don’t know enough about the event, make something up! The object is to write a poem, not to tell exactly what happened or to set the record straight. For example, try telling about the experience the first Christmas that you remember, or the first time that you remember lying to a friend.

 

Good Luck!

The most important thing is to just keep writing and reading. Read things that inspire you. Read modern poets. Read the poets that you like. It will come out in your writing. But don’t stop writing just to read. The more you write, the more your style will develop, and the closer you will be able to get to the poem that took shape in your head before you sat down to write.

 

Works Cited

North, Ryan. “Comic 195.” Dinosaur Comics. JPEG. Webcomic. Dinosaur Comics, 10 November 2003. Web. 14 March 2010.

North, Ryan. “Comic 731.” Dinosaur Comics. JPEG. Webcomic. Dinosaur Comics, 6 March 2006. Web. 14 March 2010.

 

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