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How Do You Write Poetry?
The Conclusion To The RaptureConclusion If there is going to be a Rapture, I believe that God will rapture His believers off of this earth sometime before the start .....
How Do You Write Poetry? by A K Whitehead
The very short answer is: don't write at all unless you have to.
The short answer is: in numerous different ways. A somewhat
longer answer is: find the way that best suits you - that comes
only from experience.
But, one might reasonably ask, what different methods are there
which can be tried in order to get started? Well...
Don't Wait For Inspiration But don't take that as an
absolute which suggests that one should not be inspired at all.
Of course, we all want inspiration. Yet if we wait to be
inspired for the whole poem, most of us will have taken the very
short answer given above and we shall write very little and very
infrequently.
You probably know the old adage about any form of art being ten
percent inspiration and ninety percent perspiration. It's mostly
like that with poetry. The very short answer above is saying:
write only when you feel moved to write and have something
urgent to communicate. But don't expect the inspiration to carry
you through the whole poem. On some occasions it will but, at
least in my experience, that will not happen all that often.
Inspiration can come in various ways. At one end it can
come as a complete poem; at the other, it comes simply as an
idea, a concept or a way of looking at something. Then the poem
has to be built around that in some way.
How To Build A Poem This is getting to the
nitty gritty of the question. The answer to How do I
build or write a poem depends to some extent on what you are
starting with. Suppose you have just had an idea, a concept, a
way of looking at something. One might, for example, have a
sudden flash of inspiration that a person's life could be
summarised by the array of cups they have in the kitchen. Okay,
how might one approach the development of that?
First is to have some idea of the probable length of the poem.
The cups/life idea might be interesting but it's not going to
stretch to the length of The Rhyme of the Ancient
Mariner. It's going to be quite a short poem. In fact, with
an idea of this kind short becomes very important. Trying to
stretch it out will probably result in loosing any potential for
impact.
So one is thinking of a few lines, and probably quite short
Lugh Long ArmLugh is a sun-god before he became the Milesian or De Danaan person who this story is about. At Inyo near Bishop California ..... ones. Next is the syllabic or the rhythmic structure of the
lines. A great deal can be said about these aspects and so we
can say very little in this short article. The way the lines are
constructed should be contributing to the overall impact or
impression made by the poem. Lines may have the same number of
syllables, or some lines may be long and other short. Verses,
like lines may be all of the same or of differing lengths. These
aspects may be part of a deliberate overall scheme, or they may
be due to the way you feel the poem should evolve.
Experience will usually contribute to the development of these
kinds of instincts.
The poem may also be one without thyme, or with rhyme at the end
of each line, or with rhyming lines alternating or rhyming every
third line and so forth. Alternatively, the lines may have
internal rhyming in that two words rhyme within the same line.
Consider the following poem as an example.
CUPS Used to buy the cups in tied sets,
batched identical or
matching.
But that's a now flawed memory
and for a long
time we rhymed them
into pairs, merging his and hers,
protocol of shape and colour.
Now I buy only one-by-one,
each detached and unmatchable,
self-chosen oddments on a
shelf.
Note that: there are eight syllables in each of nine lines.
There are no end rhymes but each line has an internal rhyme,
though some are less obvious than others. In the first line
buy and tie in tied rhyme. Due to the
d in tied the echo of the rhyme is subdued
or more subtle than otherwise. (Note also that there are
different kinds of syllables, which we do not have space to
Finding The Living Among The DeadGod is the God of the Living and not the God of the Dead. Speaking of Christ return and reign on this earth is sometimes difficult to get thru ..... discuss here)
Compare this poem with an alternative approach, albeit little
different in length:
THE MUG-STAND On the mug-stand (a)
handles once hung (b)
cups of pristine sameness (c)
beautiful and aimless (c)
in the song they sung (b)
at secondhand. (a)
Mugs are still hung (d)
but different (e)
shapes and
colours, chipped, cracked - (f)
and spaces from the fact
(f)
of life. Refluent (e)
the song now sung. (d)
Now The Mug Stand has a much more complicated structure.
There is no internal rhyming but the end-rhymes are arranged to
give sometimes stronger, sometimes more subtle echoes.
The letters at the end of the lines (a, b, etc.) indicate those
which rhyme with each other. The pattern is the same in each
verse so that, for example, the first and last lines in both are
seen to rhyme.
Notice also that the syllabic length of lines vary within each
verse but have the same pattern for each verse (i.e.
4,4,6,6,5,4,). The end of any line should not be chosen in an
arbitrary way, but should add something to the overall effect.
Discipline In Writing Every poem you write should have
its own form of discipline. Some people think that so-called
free verse is easy to write and that one can do anything
in such a poem. All this is untrue.These are ideas that
contribute to a lot of bad verse.Good free verse is in
many ways the most difficult to write, precisely because there
is no obvious discipline enjoined on the writer by which the
poem might be made to work. Yet somehow it does have to
create a desired effect. Writing to a defininte pattern or rule
imposes a discipline which, with some practice, will initially
help one to produce rather better verse.
If you are just starting out to write poetry, do begin with
rhymed verse. But try not to make the rhymes too heavy and
obvious. Look for different words to create an effect rather
than use the first that come to mind. Try an abab or abcabc type
of structure rather than aabb.
Make every effort to avoid cliches. Using them is so easy a trap
to fall into simply because they are phrases we have heard so
often that they just creep or spring into our mind. A good poem
has to have some degree of originality. Cliches are as
irratating as fleas on a dog. Combe through the poem to discover
any cliches - looking for phrases like Combe through! Are
there any more in this paragraph?
When the poem is finished, it is good practice to put it away
for some weeks. Then take it out and re-read it. Be severe with
yourself! Remove anything which is not right (cliches, repeats
of the same word, clumsy phrasing etc.) and re-work the poem
until you feel you can do no better.
Then submit it to some publication which uses poetry. There is
little point in writing poetry purely for oneself. Don't be put
off by rejections. Some editors may offer suggestions for
improvement. Accept them if they seem valid. But keep
submitting. Not every one will like what you have written. But
you must like it.
About the author:
About The Author A K Whitehead Web Site:
www.christianword.co.uk Has several collections published
(available on site) and over 600 individual poems in magazines
and journals in various different countries. Conditions Of Use:
This article may be reproduced on condition that it is unaltered
and that all this information is included.
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