How to Write Poetry

Introduction

I'd like to think that I know something about writing poetry. Ive been writing poetry for 7 years now, and what started as a few messy ideas written in a dark blue composition notebook, now spans over 400 pages of work, and soon to be 2 published books. I don't mean for this post to serve as some sort of masterclass in writing. I am completely unqualified to teach creative writing for I am simply a guy who can rhyme. That being said, I am proud of my work and I'd like to think that I fall solidly in the upper middle of the pack when it comes to writing poetry. Before I knew it, poetry became a release for me and a way for me to organize the chaos of my life into sustainable and productive order. It is that process of turning the tumultuous experience of my existence and processing it into something not only palatable but hopefully beautiful, that makes poetry so alluring. That being said, this is what I have learned about writting poetry.

Writing poetry should be hard.

     Whether you take a pen to paper or palms to a keyboard... Writing poetry will inevitably be difficult. The struggle of writers block and the issue of focus aside, poetry is uniquely difficult because of the level of complexity required to write. The best poetry is structured. Proper poetry lies on a knife's edge between being too chaotic to be beautiful art and being so ordered that the work loses its authenticity and thus its meaning. The balance between these two extremes is what turns good poetry into great works. I think the reduction of order and structure for the simple free verse style popularized by today's post-modern poets gives poetry a bad name. We are designed to communicate, and the degree to which we can master ourselves and our language to perfectly invoke feelings in another, makes poetry what it is meant to be. I think that poetry which lacks structure, meter and/or rhyme is often more likely to be of lower quality than works that use structured elements in writing. Yes, it is true that focusing more on expression than on structure allows for greater authenticity, but I find that this authenticity left unchecked reduces what could be great work into simply sentences broken up into fragments on a page. Something beautiful and captivating occurs when a poet tries to weave the personal narrative of their existence into something meaningful while also being constrained by their own stylistic choices. Humans naturally find structure and symmetry beautiful. Organic symmetry is rare and rarity often coincides with value. With that in mind, the organization of words is no different. We as people naturally want to seek order and find patterns. Symmetry and order of speech and writing is no different. The mind will always superimpose a ruleset that it wants followed. Why not work with that and weave a narrative within its longing for design?

   Moving away from the technical act of poetry. Writing poetry is also hard because of the vulnerability required to write. The best poetry is intimate. It is a piece of your soul that must be pressed upon, formed and put down into words. If done right, the act of writing poetry will leave a piece of you behind. All of the technical prowess, and knowledge of writing means nothing if the work does not have an intimate relationship with its creator. Poetry is about weaving the human condition and reducing it down from the chaos of lived experience into the beauty of order. When writing poetry, a poet must inevitably select from their experience what matters and what doesn't matter in order to convey a common theme. The gravity of this process is lost if the poet focuses too much on the structure and not enough on the message. Poetry should be cathartic, traumatizing, personal and personable all at once. Real poetry is at its core.... real. It is not fabricated for the sake of views and clicks. It should be a mark pressed upon the world that contains the pieces of you that are vicersal but uniquely shaped by you. Poetry should contain, your: love, hate, shame, joy, despair, hope, desire, fear, and pain. Poetry should have the promises that you make to yourself in the dead of night, and the things that you love and regret. It is those intimate thoughts, that you eventually order, which helps you learn who you are and what your style of writing will eventually be.

How to write poetry

      

     Because poetry should be ordered and intimate, do not wait for inspiration, look for it! Read some good books, watch a movie and empathize with the characters, think of that beautiful person that you know or don't know and write something inspired. See a sunrise, drink a good bourbon, watch the smoke from your cigar curl around your fingertips. Pay attention to the fog that escapes your lips on a cold winter evening, or the form of your lover as she rests in your arms. Dive into your memories, and relive the joy, the pain, the hope, and the regret. Seek meaning, and inspiration and it will eventually find you. Above all, keep an open mind, a ready heart, and a piece of paper always on standby. Lastly, let your poetry be real, then shape your poetry into order. Don't limit yourself to only what comes out at first. Take the time to work through what you feel, fleshed out into something that would make sense to another. Poetry at its heart is a conversation that you have with yourself. It is a way for you to be in touch with who you are and who you are trying to be in a productive way. It is not good to only live in the chaos of your thoughts. Write poetry. Create something tangible from the prima materia of your being, and thus be absolved of it.

Good luck :)