What is Poetry?

“Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning. Poetry may be written independently, as discrete poems, or may occur in conjunction with other arts, as in poetic drama, hymns and lyrics.” – Wikipedia

Translation: Poetry is an outlet used by a wide variety of individuals to convey emotion. It can be written in many forms and has no set rules or guidelines. This makes it very popular in the sense that just about anyone can write what they want, and how. Many people will argue this, and tell you that Poetry need always have rhyme or rhythm, but that isn’t the truth. Yes, it needs to sound pleasing and as long as what you depict comes off to the reader with a sense of meaning, or justifiable feeling, then it has served its purpose.

Before you Write

Before you even pick up a pen, or poise your hands above the keyboard, you need to know what it is that you want to write of. Not just in words, but a mental image. I find it useful to turn off everything that makes a noise and lie down with my eyes closed. Everyone does it differently, so figure out what’s best for you.

While lying there, I free myself and let my imagination pick up where I leave behind the stress of reality. Understand how you feel in that moment, and subconsciously, your mind will gather words to help you describe it. Don’t worry that your words are simple, or seem to mundane for poetry, we’ll fix that next. Just focus on centering your thoughts around that feeling, object, person, color or whatever else it may be. Remember; Poetry has a wide field of categories to choose from, so go wild.

Pick up the Pieces

Now that you understand what it is that you are going to portray, you need to put it to paper. Write down that list of words that your mind compiled for you. Don’t worry with punctuation, or formality, just jot them down. As an example, I’ll use Winter as the subject. Words that might come to mind:

cold, snow, dark, windy, dull, sad, etc.

You don’t need to limit yourself to a few words or wrack your brain for hundreds. Just write them out until nothing else comes to mind.

Turning Water into Wine

Now comes the part to do a little researching. Either pick up your written Thesaurus, or, if you don’t own one, you can go to http://thesaurus.reference.com/. This is how we’ll turn those simple words into ones that carry a little more “spark” when read. I’ll use the same words that I mentioned above, and give you an example of a more poetic word for each one.

cold: frigid
snow:blizzard or snowfall
dark: obscure, somber or lurid
windy: blustery
dull: dreary
sad: despairing, forlorn or doleful

Now then, let’s compare. I’ll write a stanza using a few of the original words first:

The house on the windy hill,
sat sad and dull.
Its presence in the cold snow
seeming dark and still.

Now I’ll take the same subject, a house, and bring that stanza to life with our new words:

The house on the blustery hill,
sat forlorn and dreary.
Its presence in the frigid snowfall
seeming somber and still.

Aging the Wine

Now, it sounds nice as it is, but it could still be quite a bit better. I like to call the next step “aging” because it’s a matter of adding that extra something through time and effort. Let’s read the stanza again:

“The house on the blustery hill,
sat forlorn and dreary.
Its presence in the frigid snowfall
seeming somber and still.”

Let’s go line by line and attempt to reform the words once more. Remember, this is your work, your poem, and you can add, edit and remove anything you want. Don’t ever be afraid to challenge sentence structure or word meanings. Connotation, or the secondary meaning of a word in addition to its primary meaning, is a very useful tool to poets. I’ll show you how this works in a few simple steps:

Line one of our stanza reads:

The house on the blustery hill

This is where a lot of those who write poetry can make a mistake; The mistake being that they just stop here and conclude that the piece is finished. Now, nothing can truly ever be perfected, but by given time, we can come that much closer.

After revising the first line, this is how it now reads:

The old house upon the steep and blustery hill

I’ve added the words old, upon and steep. Simple enough, right? Let’s do the last three lines now.

sat forlorn and dreary

Becomes:
sits in solitary; forlorn and dreary.

Its presence in the frigid snowfall

Becomes:
Its residence within the frigid snowfall

seeming somber and still.

Becomes:
appearing like death, somber and still.

Now I’ll take all of my revised lines and put them back together.

The old house upon the steep and blustery hill
sits in solitaire; forlorn and dreary.
Its residence within the frigid snowfall
appearing like death, somber and still.

See the amazing difference that aging can bring to a stanza? It’s almost like baking a cake. You take a bunch of ingrediants, mix them together in just the right way, let them bake, and when it’s done it tastes nothing like the seperate pieces.

Taste Testing.

The only thing left to do, is read your finished piece out loud. Listen to how it sounds and feel how it rolls off of your tongue. Read it over and over again until you know it nearly by heart, and then recite it aloud through memory. Make sure that you are completely content with how it sounds.

Do all of the steps I’ve provided for you here, making sure not to skip one, and you’re sure to accomplish a wonderful piece.