It occurred to me recently that just because I’ve been doing something as naturally as a fish taking to water does not necessarily mean that everyone can, with equal ease, imitate me. This is not to say that some people simply cannot write poetry. It is to say that not everyone has been equipped with the same knowledge, thought processes, and experiences. What I do as a matter of course may require explanation with another person, just as the things I do as a matter of course do not always serve me well in a different circumstance or field.
So, today, I thought I’d share a little insight into how I go about creating poetry.
The first thing you should know is that I am not dependent upon a muse in order to create a poem. Sure, when the muse strikes, interesting things come, but it is often the case that once I sit down to write a story or a poem, the inspiration comes as I consciously work around the obstacles.
Obstacle 1 Insecurity
The first obstacle I always face is my own desire to produce something impressive. This puts pressure on me to start right, work in the right direction with the right actions, and finish strong too, all of which makes it hard to start. For this reason, the majority of my poems were written during times of emotional distress. The impetus to just put something on the paper and hopefully scrape away some of the murk in my chest overrides my need to do anything well. Of course, the act of letting go of one’s pride or perfectionism is an act which does not require emotional distress. It’s something we can choose to do at any time, for any number of reasons. To get myself in the right headspace for art, telling myself “we’re just putting something on paper that we can make better later” helps a lot.
Obstacle 2 Inspiration
The second obstacle I face is more realistic. What exactly am I going to write about? Barring those times when the muse strikes, this is a question you have to answer very practically if you want to write anything at all. Personally, I tend to lean on the following conception of poetry to get the creative juices flowing:
- Think of a very specific picture which inspires an emotion. I don’t have to be able to name the emotion, but it’s better if it’s strong, and I often lean towards images that are meaningful, ironic, or beautiful. Nature’s a great place to get such images, if nothing immediately comes to mind.
- Springing from this image, create a simple story or metaphor. Frankly, the simpler the better. The picture of the ant loaded down with food for his colony becomes the worker on his regular commute, his family and personal needs hanging in the balance. The soaring eagle becomes a warrior king whose heirs lack and long for his guidance. If you’re struggling to see the connection between a picture and a story, try asking yourself some questions about the image. Some examples of helpful questions include:
- Why is that there?
- What is that person/thing thinking/experiencing.
- Why do I have this emotional reaction to this picture?
- How might this picture relate to my everyday life?
- Is there a universal truth captured in this image?
- What isn’t in this picture, and why?
- Follow the logic of this story where it leads and put into words what you yourself learn from it. I once heard that any poem could essentially be divided into two parts; the original or inspired meaning, and the discovered meaning which comes near the end. In other words, what the poem seems to be about initially is almost never the same thought it then concludes on, but rather some deeper meaning or derivative conclusion becomes clear as you keep reading. This step is related to that.
Now, I don’t think it’s always necessary to figure out your discovered theme ahead of time. My poem “Explaining it’s an Art” is an example of a poem where I didn’t figure out my conclusion until I was literally writing it in the last stanza. However, having the end goal in mind from the beginning gives you a lot more focus and will enable you to build up to your conclusion slowly. With “Explaining it’s an Art”, I ended up going back and adding two stanzas to ease the transition from my initial thoughts to my final ones, essentially shoring up my argument, but that’s the tricky way to do it.
One other note about themes. Some people write poems hoping to change people’s minds. Maybe that works for some people, but for me, all of my best poems were ultimately about what I had learned, not about things that I was hoping other people would figure out. Does that distinction sound like semantics to you? I would agree that they are similar in both manifestation and potential impact, but the wording emphasizes an underlying attitude, and in my experience, as someone who has tried both approaches, I find the underlying humility of “I learned this the other day” more communicative and honest than the underlying pride of “Haven’t you realized yet?”.
Using the above steps (namely, imagine, question, find a meaning), it becomes clear why so much wonderful poetry is based on other art and paintings. Have you tried this exercise? In another post, I showed you all a poem I had written about a lovely Japanese style painting of grass and flowers before a moon. It’s the same concept for all poems, I think, except you don’t have to be limited to a painting you’ve found or a scene in front of your eyes. An old poem of mine, Shadowpast, is a poem written entirely about and based on images and ideas I’d come up with for a fantasy story. Your imagination is the only limit. Well, that, and my personal recommendation of picking just one image to start. It’s not like you can’t create beautiful poems based on a combination of images, or even as a series of changing images, but that’s raising the level before you’ve mastered the basics.
Obstacle 3 Word Choice
What you should have at this stage is the skeleton of a poem. The organs, muscle, nerves and flesh of this poem will come from the words we choose and the poetic techniques we employ to bring these ideas to life. Whole books and websites have been written on the subject of poetic techniques and word choice, so I won’t pulverize your brain with those details here, but the good news about this obstacle is that it’s imaginary.
There are no universal rules in poetry about what is and isn’t beautiful, is and isn’t effective, is and isn’t poetry. If you are taking your skeleton and wrapping words around it, you are creating poetry. It’s best if you just focus on making it the way you want it. Yes, poetic techniques like alliteration, imagery, rhythm, rhyming, organizing, structuring, oxymorons, irony, similes, metaphors, and the interplay of figurative and literal word choice are all tools that have the power to make your poem better in some fashion. But, it isn’t necessary. We can only talk about making your poetry better once you have poetry to work with.
How does this look in practice?
Well, let’s take a look at one of my shorter poems for an example.
For the old woman in the shoe, I started with the image from the old fairy tale. Except, you see, I’ve never actually read that story, or I remember none of its particulars. All I remember is the mental image of a massive, ratty shoe, and a withered old woman living in it. Then I let this idea expand into a little story, asking myself questions like “Why would a woman live in such a place?” “What of her husband?” “How would other people living nearby respond?” By these questions, I ended up with a little story in my head of an old woman who never had a husband or children of her own, but she loves deeply and tenderly, and the children in the village sense this and are drawn to her even though she’s old, ugly and smelly, but many of the adults are put off by the woman’s external flaws and their envy. Then I put it into words. Along the way, I discovered that what I really wanted to do was complain about the way that some people would say things as though they were joking, but the thing was true and the words were ultimately designed to injure. That’s how I got this:
There was an old bat who lived in a shoe
She could make most any child coo
But she had few friends for the parents said
“She loves my children more than I do.”
Now ‘twas all said in jest, but wary be
For words said in jest are rarely empty
Obstacle 4 Readability
Now, notice that not all of the story that I imagined made it into the poem. No mention is made of her celibacy, no explanation given for her way with children, any negative traits associated with her person or appearance are left entirely to the inference of the reader based on her description as “old bat” and “living in a shoe”. This is part of the reason I describe the answers you got from the first two obstacles as the “skeleton” of the poem. It’s the foundation on which you write the poem, not necessarily the poem itself.
The amount I ended up cutting is also largely due to my intentional choices to make as much of the poem as obscure as possible, without losing the most important meanings of the poem. This attitude has always had a significant influence on the artistic choices I make as a poet. Is this intent helpful, and does it work for this poem? I don’t know, that’s just the way I wrote it.
Perhaps if I were to publish a collection of my own poems, I might feel inclined to ask hard questions about efficacy, readership, and responsibility, but that’s a story for another time. Right now, I write poems that I understand, that beautifully represent something to me, for my own sake, so I only seek to improve them to the level where they’re doing that. This is a safe place to begin, if you’re only just beginning to write poetry, because there’s a lot less pressure and things to think about that way.
Obstacle 5 Willingness
Finally, I’ll show you one more example, but this time I want you to do it with me. The only way to overcome any lingering emotional resistance to the idea of writing a poem is to sit down and do it. It doesn’t have to be perfect. In fact, it’s better to assume it won’t be. Remember, this is a story about how to write a poem. You’ll never get to the latter stage where you get to make a poem better if you never have any poems to improve upon. A man will never obtain polished, colorful stones if he does not first collect unimpressive rocks and throw them into the tumbler. You’ll never have flowers if you never get in the mud and plant the strange little bugs we call seeds. So, I encourage you to walk with me, step by step, as we create a little, imperfect poem.
- Pick an image. Anything will do, but an image that inspires an emotion or works as a metaphor is better. As for me, I’ll pick… Mist covered mountains. For me, the sight of these is captivating, intriguing, beautiful and sad all at once. If it makes the exercise easier for you, you can work off of the same image.
- Ask yourself questions and let it expand. How would you describe these mountains? Are there figurative connections to be made? Why does the mist make me sad? Why does it intrigue me? How does this mist come about, and is that significant to the feeling it inspires, or give greater insight to the metaphor? What are some of the beautiful and/or practical elements of mist (for me, few things are as beautiful as practicality)?
- Now, at this stage you have two options.
- Some people, perhaps even many, start writing the poem at this point, relying on the seed of inspiration planted by the first two steps to help them discover the deeper meaning, the discovered theme. I expect that the reason it is called the “discovered” meaning is because it is not only the readers, but the poets themselves, who discover this theme. And perhaps you’ve picked up on this already, but I happen to fall into this category as well. If this is the approach you also want to take, you can start writing out verses in your preferred prose, keeping in mind that you are now using the poem as you write it to seek out the deeper or wider meaning behind the picture you’ve chosen. This approach is particularly helpful for people who, like myself, needed the handicap of poetry in order to become acquainted with my own emotions.
- However, not everyone needs this handicap. Further, not everyone finds it easier to think when they’re forcing themselves to think in obscure, poetic language. For you comparatively normal people, my advice is to choose your end goal ahead of time. Get in touch with the deeper meaning you find in the picture, and then plot a simple course from point A) establishing the image and feelings firmly in the reader’s mind, to B) the revelation of the deeper meaning or wider application.
If you’re still struggling to put together your thoughts and words, allow me to display what I scribbled out from my chosen prompt, and how I immediately improved upon it.
The mists cling to the world’s eaves,
Their flailing limbs sanguine
They soak the tops with ruminant thoughts
Even as they feed the moss
What do you see, little water beads?
How many cycles have you tread?
And is the reluctance in your touch
My imagination, or your hesitant trust?
Interloper though you be,
You dance about gamely,
And hope with time and no bets hedged
To sail aloft, acknowledged.
What of a roaring voice,
As seas and storms are prone?
Or of flashing lights and colors,
To be like the river and rainbow?
Can you not imitate the clouds
Who from afar contribute?
Or condense your restless form as streams,
and gouge out your commute?
No indeed, for God made thee
To be mist and nothing else.
Do your work as you are able
For in this is wisdom and health.
And if at times you seem forlorn,
Lo, you are not abandoned
The Mighty One, Origin of form without form
Could never leave you stranded.
This first thing I do when really putting words to my ideas is to rely on my internal sense of rhythm. I also default to rhyming where I can, though you can see in this version that where I should and shouldn’t be rhyming has yet to be determined. That, along with finding words that fit the rhythm or themes better, are the first things I subsequently target for improvement.
The mists grimly cling to the world’s eaves,
Their flailing limbs sanguine,
They soak the moss with ruminant thoughts
While the wayward counts the cost
What do you see, little water beads?
How many cycles have you tread?
And is the reluctance in your touch
My fancy, or your fragile trust?
Interloper though you be,
You dance about gamely,
And hope with time and no bets hedged
To drift amidst, acknowledged.
What of a roaring voice,
As seas and storms are prone?
Or of flashing lights and colors,
As with the river and rainbow?
Can you not imitate the clouds
Who from afar contribute?
Or condense your restless form as streams,
and gouge out your commute?
No indeed, for God made thee
To be mist and nothing else.
Do your work as you are able
For in this is wisdom and health.
And if at times you seem forlorn,
Lo, you are not abandoned
The Mighty Maker of form without form
Could never leave you stranded.
You’ll notice at this stage that the poem is divided in two by the rhyming convention. This often happens to me, and ordinarily I would pick one rhyming convention and manipulate the current verses or add lines to make it work for the rest, but in this instance I kind of like it, so I think I’ll keep it. However, I am actually bothered by the lines that are significantly longer or shorter than the rest, unless I’m doing it on purpose, so this is typically the stage at which I go over the whole poem and count how many beats and/or syllables are in each line. I typically take the median, then, and alter the lines as best I can to get closer to that median overall, or find a pattern and make the rest of it fit the pattern. Note, this is just a personal preference for the poetry I write, and is by no means necessary for all poetry, but if you’re curious, this is what that process looks like.
Mists cling grimly to the world’s eaves, (8)
Their flailing limbs sanguine greaves, (7)
They soak moss with ruminant thoughts (8)
While the wayward counts the cost (7)
What see ye, little water beads? (8)
How many cycles have you tread? (8)
Is the reluctance of your touch (8)
My fancy, or your fragile trust? (8)
Interloper though you be, (7)
You dance about the slopes gamely, (8)
And hope with time and no bets hedged (8)
To drift amidst, acknowledged.(7)
What if you tried a roaring voice, (8)
As seas and storms are often prone? (8)
Or of flashing lights and colors, (8)
As with the river and rainbow? (8)
Can you not imitate the clouds (8)
Who from afar contribute? (7)
Or bind your restless form as streams, (8)
and gouge out your commute? (7)
No indeed, for God made thee (7)
To be mist and nothing else. (7)
Do your work as you are able (8)
For this is wisdom and health. (7)
And if at times you seem forlorn, (8)
Lo, you are not abandoned (7 or 8)
Lord Maker of form without form (8)
Could never leave you stranded. (7)
This is what I consider a proper 1st draft, ready to be set aside for a time, or shared with a trusted few, so that fresh eyes and perspectives can make this poem even better.
Well, were you able to make a poem yourself? Congratulations! Does it need improvement? Well, now that you’ve got something on paper, you have something to improve. Enjoy your triumph for a moment before worrying about how long the road ahead of you is. After all, you’ve just started writing poetry. You have your whole life to get better at it, and if you know Jesus as your Savior, you have all of eternity. There’s no rush to be perfect out of the gate, so I strongly encourage you to make the most out of each step you take on this journey.
With grins,
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