Ways to improve your poetry

Ways to Improve Your Poetry

billy61@earthlnk.net

What is poetry?

Sometimes, we can learn what a thing is by comparing it to something we already know. But sometimes it is easier and more revealing to simply point and say “There it is!” Perhaps poetry is like that: something best experienced, not explained. In that sense, every poem is an answer to the question "What is poetry?" And every poet can learn to answer it well. But writing a poem is first play, then work. So let your imagination play with you--discover what you want to say. Then work with your imagination--explore different ways to say what you have seen, heard, thought and felt. Shape your poem like a sculptor removing bits and pieces from marble or granite. Spend time with your poem. Dance with it. Let others cut in. But give it the lead, then get out of the way. For every poem must ultimately speak for itself…

How can I let my imagination play with me?

Get out of your head, back to nature and into your body.  Watch ripples on a lake. Touch a loved one's face. Smell a flower. Listen to waves kissing the shore. Take a stroll under the stars. Taste the wind. Let something concrete and sensory get a hold of you.

What do you mean, work with my imagination?

Revise your poem to spend time with it. You must walk more than a mile with a poem before it gives up its secrets. Don't walk the main road. Explore the country roads. Take a path less traveled by--it will make all the difference. And take your time--if you are in a hurry to get somewhere, you will miss all that. For it is an inward journey, where the other characters that are you yearn to walk that page of prancing poetry. Let their voices speak through yours. But find the right ones, for revision is ultimately a process of choosing words.

How can I choose the right word?

Never forget that words are merely handles to carry the idea of something from one person to the next--not the thing itself. Ezra Pound said  “Go in fear of abstractions—the natural object is always the adequate symbol…” Perhaps Wallace Stevens said it best: “No ideas but in things…” So the best word is the one that shows, not tells. But words carry both surface clarity and depth of meaning. When connected to other words, they become synergistically greater than a mere sum of their parts. And rich in meaningful ambiguity. Meanings are built into words by their history. Poets can choose the right word by tapping into the roots of that history. In everyday speech, we tend to use the direct, explicit meaning of a word--the meaning most people associate with it. But poets and writers combine words in new ways to convey new thoughts and feelings with focused, concise precision and elegant yet powerful clarity.  So never let one word speak for another. Synonyms are semantic fiction. Every word says what all the others leave unsaid.  Find the right one. Compare your word pictures to a photograph. Are they focused, sharp and clear? If not, eliminate words that...

·        Blur the picture with weak, fuzzy nouns, verbs and adjectives

·        Stop the action with passive verbs or prepositional phrases

·        Shift the action out of the simple past or present

·        Do nothing to convey or sharpen the image

·        Interpret the poem for the reader

Which words can blur, stop or block a reader’s personal response?

Every good poem rises above a few hallowed rules, but words like the ones below can be "red flags" to indicate that a poem lacks specific, sensory details and action...

·        came, few, got, looked, most, said, some, very, went...

·        are, at, in, is, of, on, to

·        suddenly, then, was, were, would

·        back, down, up

·        bad, beautiful, foolish, good, happy, sad, ugly, wise...

How can I fix weak, fuzzy, passive nouns and verbs?

Replace them with a sharp, focused word picture of real things in action. "The fruit was eaten by  the birds." hands the reader a blank image: no fruit, no birds and no action. The solution is to find an actor for the action, and re-write the sentence with an active, dynamic verb, a specific fruit and specific birds, such as "The orioles pecked the strawberries."

Could you be more specific?

Use nouns that don't need adjectives to be specific and sensory: She touched the rough bark...

Use verbs that don't need adverbs to convey specific action: Suddenly, the rabbit jumped...

Use active, not passive verbs: The birds ate the berries. not  The berries were eaten by the birds.  or  The birds were eating the berries.
 

Use verbs that match actor and action specifically:  The sparrows pecked the berries.

Use verbal metaphors to create dynamic images: The skunk perfumed the fox...

Use adjectives that are sensory, not judgmental: Her hands were ugly, cobbled stones...

Use words that appeal to the ear as well as to the eye and the mind, such as She flowed mellifluously down the stairs. rather than She flowed like honey down the stairs

What about line breaks?

Break a line to create ambiguity, curiosity, surprise and deeper meaning, or to influence mood, pace, pause and rhythm. Not to make the poem look better, or to help the reader to identify what is important. Short lines convey the compressed energy of doubt, fear, anger, impatience and joy. Long lines convey the more relaxed energy of confidence and pleasure. A line is said to be enjambed when the next line can be read without a pause. A line is said to be end-stopped when a pause occurs at the end of a line. Pauses (caesuras) occur where the reader must compensate for a missing measure. Here are a few rules of thumb...

Where punctuation occurs:

Mary had a little goat,
“It swallows sticks and cans!”
She wrote.

To break up the repetitive monotony of meter and rhyme:

Busy, busy little bee
Won't you spend some time
With me?

To identify unpunctuated places where you want the reader to pause...

She was a woman of color
And depth.

To leverage the reader's curiosity onto the next line...

Amber saw no yellow
Ribbons when she left that silver bus.

To evoke humor and surprise...

Amber had the cutest
Tadpole Bob had ever seen.

To create simple ambiguity, or a second, deeper meaning...

Amber’s suitcase swelled with baggage
She had left in Tennessee.

To slow or speed the pace, to set the mood....

You find the list
You sign.
You sit
You sweat a bit

Your fingers strumming my heart
Paddled me down a long, meandering afternoon

Towards another world...

How does a poem move from nature to thoughts and feelings?

Fulcrums can shift a reader's attention from the concrete to the abstract:

Weeds--outsiders like me...    Shall we compare thee to a summer's breeze?

^                         ^

Should I write poems in free verse or poems that rhyme?

Robert Frost said "Writing a poem that doesn't rhyme is like playing tennis with the net down..." But free verse poetry can be just as evocative as rhyming poetry. And a poorly rhymed poem can sound trite and terrible--one reason why editors tend to give rhymed poems closer scrutiny than free verse poems. It is true that the limitations brought to a project by the rules of form and structure also bring beauty. But freedom releases its own brand of elegance. It is difficult to walk on water, for example, because that medium does not resist our movements in the same way that walking on pavement or running through molasses in January do. Perhaps Frost is saying we should not write free verse, but my view is that our struggle to write a poem that rhymes will create something simply different, not better, than a poem without rhyme. It might be fun to play tennis without the net. And perhaps without keeping score, too. So experiment with free verse and rhyme, so both techniques are in your poetic tool box. Swim, walk, run, fly, rhyme or unrhyme--each has its own rules, its own grace.

Internal rhyme:

The trees are married to the wind;
It carries their seeds abroad...

Masculine rhyme (single syllable) conveys emphatic, predictable finality:

Men are men, and boys are boys
But men have more expensive toys!

Feminine rhyme (two syllables) conveys on-going, hopeful anticipation:

He sat there drinking juleps
While she danced among the tulips...

What is a metaphor, and how does it work?

The word  meta [far side]  phor [bearing]  means to carry the use of a word beyond its normal, denotative meaning to a more figurative, connotative meaning. Metaphors are therefore word pictures that convey a subtle comparison between one thing and another; they do this by showing, not telling, by circling their subject as a mongoose actively stalks a cobra, as the moon passively orbits the earth. Similes are too explicit to be true metaphors. Rather than imply a comparison, they say it: "My love is like a red rose..." By asking the reader to do less of the imaginative work, similes are seldom as evocative as metaphors...

Simple metaphor:      "My love--a red, red rose..."
Complex metaphor:  "Her rose-red nose..."
Verbal metaphor:     "My love blossomed red and fragrant in the Spring..."

Extended metaphors carry the comparison over many lines:

My love, a solitary rose
Pure red and perfect
Long stemmed and lovely

What books can you recommend?

How Does a Poem Mean? by John Ciardi, In the Palm of Your Hand by Steve Kowit and Poets Guide by Michael J. Bugeja continue to inspire and inform my growth as a poet. There are many others—find ones that speak to where you are now, and to where you want to go with your poetry. And read the poetry of other poets. Start with The Language of Life by Bill Moyer, then find an anthology of both past and contemporary poetry--one who dwells only on the past, robs the present, but one who ignores the past, robs the future.

When reading poems by other poets, strive to experience the poem before trying to explain it. First ask “How does it mean?” before asking “What does it mean?” Message hunting can move you away from the heart and soul of a poem. The “meaning” of a poem is in the sights and sounds of its performance, not in the words that paraphrase it, and not in the analysis that kills it. Most things die when their details are removed. Good poetry doesn’t write down to its audience—it asks them to read up to it. In that sense, poetry doesn’t answer questions, it asks them. And, since most answers tend to be fastened with a nail, the certainty we find in them can trick us into camping on the same old ground forever. So read the poem aloud. Read it again. And again. What do you hear? What do you see? You must walk more than a mile with a poem before it will give up its secrets. And those secrets are in the showing, not in the telling.

And read books on subjects other then poetry. Poetry is life, so poets see everything as relevant, because everything is connected. Richard Bach, Joseph Bruchac, Carl Sagan, David Carradine, Joseph Campbell, Paul Rezendes continue to inspire and inform my journey as both a poet and a person—perhaps they will speak to you, too.

What criteria can I use to critique my poems?

Ultimately, the fun of creating becomes the work of revision. It is my view that a poem should appeal to the ear, the mind and the heart. Here are some questions to help you work the bugs out of your poem, to polish it for publication or performance, to “tune” it to the sound, the sense and the spirit of fine poetry…

Is it sensitive...?  [Is it emotionally responsive and sincere? Pathos or bathos?]

Does this poem paint an accurate picture of real life and the human condition?

Does it evoke real awe, compassion, joy, pain, humor and terror?

Or trivialize its own thoughts and feelings with insincere, mawkish language?

Does it touch you in a personal way--evoke a personal response?

Is it accessible...?  [Does it have surface clarity? Depth? Sharp, focused images?]

Is this poem’s denotative, surface meaning clear, idiosyncratic or incomprehensible?

Does it convey deeper meanings metaphorically & connotatively, or just explain them?

Does the poem evoke these meanings with specific, sensory details?

Does it paint a sharp, focused, dynamic picture in the simple past or present?

Or blur the picture with static, passive verbs and prepositional phrases?

Does this poem say everything it needs to say, and no more?

Or is it cluttered with weeds & dead wood that blur the picture or weaken the story?

Is the shift from concrete to abstract smooth & effective or clumsy & illogical?

Do you identify with the time, place and circumstances from which this poem arises?

Is it enjoyable...?  [Does it tell a story filled with adventure, surprise, discovery?]

Does it tell a story, or merely convey an incident, a thought, a feeling?

Does the poem burden its audience with the poet’s interpretation?

Does it invite the reader to enter the poem and identify with the persona, the drama?

Or hold its audience at arm’s length, like a passive or unwelcome observer?

Is it filled with adventure, surprise and the potential for discovery?

Is it musical...?   [Does it sound good? Flow rhythmically? Stagger or stumble?]

Does this poem sound good when read aloud?

Do the words and syllables flow rhythmically?

Does the rhyme scheme sound natural or forced?

Does the meter inspire or impede the action and feelings in the poem?

Does the internal rhyme pull sounds together, or call attention to itself?

Is it suitable…?   [Which audience will best respond to this poem?]

Is this poem more suited for the eyes or the ears?

Will this poem work better on the page or on the stage?

Publication or performance?

Which audience would respond best to the plot, persona, drama and feelings?

Is this poem memorable in sound, sense and spirit?

What can I do to prevent writer's block?

Nothing--let it run its course. The pause will do you good. The Muse can't fill a full cup. One exception: if you are trying to create and edit at the same time, stop--poetry is first play, then work. Don't try to play and work at the same time--it causes writer's block...

What else can I do to improve my poetry?

=> Join poetry forums on the world wide web, and give and get thoughtful, specific, detailed, constructive feedback. Participate in forums where “Gosh, Fred, what a nice poem!” is the exception, not the rule.

=> Read or perform your poems at open mike events in coffee shops, cafes and art galleries. The stage can be a more powerful influence than the page, because strangers provide immediate, visceral feedback. And new ground is often broken, for both the audience and the poet, in grass-roots settings...

·        Introduce your poem with a brief, personal, entertaining comment.

·        Perform poems that appeal to the ear, that  connect with your audience.

·        Perform poems with a clear message, not an epic story.

·        Speak slowly and pronounce each word clearly.

·        Read with feeling and sincerity, not with monotones or histrionics.

·        Do your entertaining poems early and your passionate, personal poems later.

·        Save poems of tested power to open and close your reading.

·        Do it from your head and heart, not from a piece of paper!

·        Strive to get beyond the jitters of self consciousness--it's about them, not you…

=> Collect quotations that speak to your head and your heart. Start with books and films, and expand your collection to things people say in real life. These are touchstones for what has heart and meaning for you, shards of the bigger picture that is you, the poet and the person--signposts to keep you on your poetic path.

=> James Dickey said “Words go together in zillions of ways…” Find the ways that go deep, not shallow. So write, write and rewrite. But write with your heart, rewrite with your head.