On Writing Poetry

There’s nothing more elusive than the emotional charge of a well-written poem. How, we wonder, does a word after a word after a word become so potent as to be felt deeply by the reader and never forgotten? 

The idea of teaching poetry leaves a bad taste in the mouth. There aren’t necessarily right or wrong ways to write a poem, and the distinctions can easily be made relative by the reader’s experience. 

A poet is someone who burns with emotion, who—in the words of Mary Oliver—has “a mind that is lively and inquiring, compassionate, curious, angry, full of music, full of feeling” and who cannot bear to keep it in.

Like with any form of art, such as painting and music, there are exercises to practice to artfully compose poetry (see The Practicing Poet edited by Diane Lockward). But rather than attempt to teach you all there is to know about poetry (an enormously time-consuming task), from the basics of meter, rhyme, and form to crafting imagery, developing your voice and style, and creating imaginative similes and metaphors, we would rather spend this time writing about the beautiful possibilities of poetry, and how it acts as a balm for the souls of the writer and reader alike. 

If you are new to creating poems, we hope this section convinces you to pick up the pen and explore this delicate and expressive form of writing. If you are a practicing poet, we hope what follows inspires you to keep going. 

What is it About Poetry?

Mary Oliver, one of the most popular and widely honoured poets in the U.S., had much to say about poetry. At the end of her book, Rules for the Dance, Oliver writes, “No poet ever wrote a poem to dishonour life, to compromise high ideals, to scorn religious views, to demean hope or gratitude, to argue against tenderness, to place rancor before love, or to praise littleness of soul. Not one. Not ever.”

A poem is a declaration of life. As Oliver says, “Every poem is a statement.” About what? Well, that’s up to the poet—it can be about passions, dreams, failure, life, death, love, heaven and hell, mystery, meaning. 

Poetry is music and dance, revealing the magic hidden within everyday language—the sublime within the mundane. It rushes through the body, reminding us that we are made of flesh. It speaks of the human condition, our fragile and brief lives, our finitude. It shares secrets and tells stories. It confesses. It demands. It claws at the ineffable. It names things and gives them colour. It grants awareness and delights the imagination. It’s a secret shared between friends, and if you lean in and listen, and we mean really listen, your life will be all the more vibrant for it.

But as the saying goes, “show, don’t tell.” So, below are a handful of our favorite poems. Hopefully they will resonate with you as they did with us:

Read Widely and Deeply

Do you know the difference between a sonnet and a villanelle? A ballad and a pantoum? A sestina and a blank verse? Can you tell an iamb from an anapest from a trochee? 

You may know the answers to all these questions, or you may have no clue. Regardless, there’s no better way to understand the rules of the dance than to read poetry, and lots of it. Reading poetry is like laying the foundation of a house. It’s vital to not only familiarize yourself with the language of poetry, but to understand the tradition of the art form, passed over from one poet to the next.

Mary Oliver has lamented the modern reader’s inability to appreciate the range and complexity of poetry beyond contemporary standards, writing, 

“[the reader comes] to poems, frankly, with tin ears. They cannot scan […] They read for comprehension and hear little if anything of the interwoven pleasures of the sound and the pattern of the poem, which are also deeply instructive concerning the statement of the poem, along with the meanings of the words themselves. Not knowing how to listen, they read the poem but they do not hear it sing, or slide, or slow down, or crush with the heel of sound, or leap off the line, or hurry, or sob, or refuse to move from the self-pride of the calm pentameter, no matter what fire is rustling through it.”

A good poet, like a good writer, reads. It’s a simple rule. All the best rules are. 

Reading helps the writer in a variety of ways. It connects the writer to the long line of writers that came before them. It allows the writer to observe and absorb a wide range of work, both technical and non-technical, that they may then assimilate into their writer’s toolbox. It acts as inspiration and education. It illuminates the path and offers them a way to move forward.

Read, read, read. 

Here are a handful of poetry collections to whet your appetite:

If you don’t feel like spending money, you can always just browse the Poetry Foundation website.

Imagine a World Like That…

Oftentimes, an unsure poet may try to universalize whatever it is they’re writing about by injecting the poem with what can only be described as desperate sentimentality. One poet may yearn to write a poem about their lover, but end up only writing about love, a vague and unimaginative word. Another may try to put into words how the ocean makes them feel, but end up speaking only of transcendentalism and grand designs. 

Neither poet says anything about what it feels like to experience the life they are living. 

Voltaire once wrote, “L’art d’ennuyer est de tout dire.” The secret to being boring is to say everything. 

Good poems tap into our imagination. Rather than abstract up into the world of notions, strong poems describe what is seen, smelled, heard, tasted, and touched. Great poems are pregnant with imagery and metaphor, delightful ways of explaining the world around us.

“Imagine a literal world,” writes Kim Addonizio in The Poet’s Companion, “in which nothing was ever seen in terms of anything else. Falling blossoms wouldn’t remind you of snow […] The shape of a cloud would never suggest a horse or a sailing ship. If such a world were possible, it would be a severely impoverished one.”

Images haunt. Metaphors paint old emotions and experiences anew. Both are important tools of a great poet.

In his book on style, F.L. Lucas shows “how much ordinary language is built off dead metaphors.” Lucas writes, “Even a seemingly simple word like ‘zest’ has gained its meaning metaphorically; from its literal sense of ‘orange or lemon peel’ it came to be used for ‘flavour, relish,’ and then for ‘a feeling of relish.’ Even our most ideal terms are metaphors with material roots; an ‘idea’ is merely a ‘shape’ […] ‘Spirit’ meant once no more than ‘breath.’”

The benefits of metaphor are many: “Metaphor, above all, can give strength, clarity, and speed,” continues Lucas. “It can add wit, humour, individuality, poetry […] against boredom there are no better antidotes than these qualities that vivid metaphor can often bring.”

Take T. R. Hummer’s poem “Where You Go When She Sleeps,” for example. Pay attention to how he describes his love for her—not directly, but through his close attention to the details of her face, head, and body: her bright head and easy breath, her jerking eyelids, her hair shiny “like metal.” The idea of falling in love is compared to falling into “a silo full of oats,” a “gold whirlpool,” that drags you down into the deep rush of that “gold sea.” His use of enjambment and a lack of periods breathlessly carry us forward to the end of the poem. It is a rush—just as we imagine love to be. Just as love is.

We’ll leave you with more poignant words from Mary Oliver: “Poetry is a river; many voices travel in it; poem after poem moves along in the exciting crests and falls of the river waves. None is timeless; each arrives in a historical context; almost everything, in the end, passes. But the desire to make a poem, and the world’s willingness to receive it—indeed the world’s need of it—these never pass.”

For more resources, browse the collection of books listed below about reading and writing poetry. 

Required Reading: 

    • A Poetry Handbook by Mary Oliver 
    • Making a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms by Mark Strand and Eavan Boland 
  • Rules for the Dance: A Handbook for Writing and Reading Metrical Verse by Mary Oliver 
  • The Practicing Poet edited by Diane Lockward
    • The Poet’s Companion by Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux
  • The Daily Poet by Kelli Russell Agodon and Martha Silano

Feel ready to submit your poem to Archetype? Go to our submissions page to review general guidelines and submit!

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