Kayla Ancrum answered a question here that inspired this whole thing. The crux of the question is “How do you write poems?”
Poetically, I could say to write poems your swish around all the roiling emotions you’ve got sloshing around inside you and spit them up into perfectly worded lines and metaphors, but that wouldn’t scratch the surface of what it is to write poetry.
Poetry is one of the arts that best exemplifies the strides post-modern art created. In actuality, it is a mix of visual, verbal, and written arts. As such, you can take all sorts of approaches to writing, and there isn’t a single one that is “more correct”. That is probably the most freeing and daunting part of poetry. There will always be someone’s opinion about what they like, but in the end they can shove it. It’s your poem, and you will do what you want with it.
So how do you write poetry?
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Poetry in ten easy steps:
Step one: Decide you want to write poetry. This can be a conscious or subconscious decision, and it can really be boiled down to deciding you want to write something down. You can decide it’s poetry after the fact.
Step two: Think about what you want to write, and how you want to write it. This is honestly the hardest part. This is you staring at a blank canvas trying to decipher the painting that’s hiding there somewhere in the future.
Step three: Write. This will always be the way you start. Just get your ideas on the page so you can see them in front of you. Once there are words on the page they become infinitely easier to work with, trust me.
Step four: Once you’ve written to the end of your inspiration, go back and read what you have. Don’t delete anything yet, just read through it and get a feel for how it sounds to you, how it looks.
Step five: If you don’t like what you have, before you delete anything, try switching out some words, play with where they fall on the page. Change the punctuation up.
Step six: If, even after playing with it, you feel like you don’t have anything, don’t delete it. Save it somewhere you know you’ll find it again. On your computer, in a notebook you use, in the margins of your textbook. A failure in poetry isn’t something to be ashamed of, and it could well be the inspiration for your most amazing piece ever, so keep it close and read it through sometimes. See if anything sticks.
Step seven: If it doesn’t feel right, but you don’t know what else to fiddle with, write again, either a new poem on the same subject, or a new stanza or section in your current work.
Step eight: Repeat any of the above steps until you’re happy with it.
Step nine: Share it with people, strangers, family, friends, whoever you’re comfortable with. Find out what they think of it, but don’t let it discourage you. Some people just don’t like poetry, and that’s okay. It might be a poem that just doesn’t click with them or their interests, and that’s okay too. People are people and people are different.
Step ten: If you get feedback you think you might use, look at your poem and try it with the feedback. Decide if you like it that way or not. You may never be done re-drafting your poems, and that’s okay. I’ve mentioned this before but Walt Whitman, one of the legendary American poets, redrafted his book of poems Leaves of Grass until he died. There is no shame in trying to polish something forever, if that’s what makes you happy.
Be happy, because even if no one but you likes it, you’ve written yourself a poem.
Even if you misspell words, even if it has no form, even if it doesn’t make sense, you’ve written yourself a poem. The one and only requirement for poetry is that it speaks to you as its creator. If it means something to you, it’s a poem.
Kayla describes poetry as a sort of super precise form of writing, and it is. A lot of educators will teach you that very definition, and it’s a beautiful definition. But it’s only part of the truth. It doesn’t have to be that way. Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey are both what are considered “epic” poems: long works that were usually spoken/sung by a minstrel or similar sort of entertainer. Shakespeare’s plays are all written in verse, an element that is heavily ingrained in poetry of the time. Poetry is less of any one thing, and more of a catch-all for things that aren’t prose. Because of that, there is always cross-over. Prose has elements of poetry, and poetry has elements of prose, but prose has rules like grammar that most people would prefer you to follow, not because it’s more correct, but because it’s easier for them to understand what you’re saying. If you’re writing short poetry, you don’t have to follow those same rules because a reader is more willing to decipher your words if there aren’t as many. You can use those rules if you want, and you may have stronger poetry for it, but poetry can be weird, and people will probably still read it.
So really, you can use my ten step method, if you want, or you can use my one step method:
How to write poetry:
Step one: Don’t write prose.
I could talk about this all day, really. But I’ll leave it there.
-Stephen
