LYRIC WRITING

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Note From Dave at World Chi:

The following is one of the best articles on Poetry writing I have ever read.

I believe that lyrics should be held to the same standard of quality that poetry is. It seems that over the last 50 years or so, writing good quality lyrics have taken a back seat to music and we have gotten sloppy with our lyrics. This is a shame. Often, the thing that most impresses or sticks with a listener is the lyrics. Even though this article is about poetry, I believe every bit of it applies to lyrics.

I did not write this article (although I wish I could have). Unfortunately, I don't know who the original author was, or I would give credit to them. If you happen to find out please let me know.

Hope you get a lot of this.

For better lyrics and music,

Dave

What is Poetry?

"A poem in an exploration rather than a disquisition." By this, Robin Skelton means that a poem isn't a way of stating something you already know in a clear and precise manner. Instead, it is how a poet tries to figure things out -- a way of trying to organize one's thoughts and feelings about a subject, to find a pattern in the chaos and come to some sort of resolution or conclusion.

More mundanely, a poem is "a metrical composition" or "an elevated composition in verse" (The Concise Oxford Dictionary). When we think of poetry, we think of lines and stanzas, rhythm and rhyme scheme, fancy language and beautiful words. Sometimes we think writing poetry is easy: it just flows out and every word is perfect and you should never edit or you'll lose the energy of the work. Other times we think we're just no good at it and we'll never be a poet and we should just stop trying.

Almost any poem can be improved by revising (some poems will need more revisions than others), and nearly everyone can become a better poet, if not a good one. The biggest key to poetry, aside from learning the technical details, is finding the right things for you to write about. They won't be the same as the right things for someone else to write about.

What to Write About

As with any kind of writing, poets generally write about things that they feel strongly about. The first task in becoming a poet is to find out what affects you the most. What are the things that make you angry, that make you shiver or cry or grind your teeth so hard it hurts? Even if those topics seem trivial, if they cause a strong reaction in you, then you will be able to write honestly and strongly about them, and make them seem no longer trivial to your readers.

Once you discover the things that affect you, you may need to push on one step farther. As Robin Skelton says:

Knowing that one has a complex, confused, and emotionally stimulating attitude towards ships or shoes or sealing wax, however, is not enough. It is not enough partly because the very attaching of those simple labels makes these subjects seem in themselves simple, and partly because if we explore further we may well find that ships and shoes and sealing wax are merely defensive euphemisms for an obsession with drowning, a nervous tension at the thought of traveling, and a very disturbed attitude towards authority and law.

So think carefully about the things that disturb you or fascinate you or frighten you, and see if you can figure out why you have that reaction. You may find that you then have the subject matter for a poem (or, more likely, many poems).

How to Use this Guide

Just as with the Beginner's Guide to Writing Fiction, I have attempted to arrange this Guide in a logical order. Except for Part 1 (which you are reading now), and Part 2: Getting Started, the order I've arranged the Guide should not be taken as the order in which you should compose a poem. All of the components of poetry are interrelated, though they must be separated out in order to study them. The primary topics covered by this Guide are:

    * getting started: ways to get your creativity flowing, first experiments with poetry
    * plot: types of plots in poetry, the threads tying a poem together
    * diction: the kind of language used, selection of vocabulary
    * prosody and rhythm: the basics of composing metrical poetry
    * repetition and rhyme: more poetry basics
    * free verse and concrete poetry: the basics of non-metrical verse
    * forms: sonnets, sestinas and more
    * revising and reading: ways to make your raw poetry better

A good way to make use of this Guide is to read though Parts 1 and 2, trying the exercises and suggestions as you go. Then move on to the rest of the Guide, but this time read it all the way through once before attempting to make use of the information. This will give you a basic knowledge of how poetry works. If you are only interested in writing free verse, I strongly encourage you to read the sections on prosody/rhythm and repetition/rhyme anyway, as there are many aspects of these topics that can be used to great effect, even in non-metrical poetry.

You'll probably find that most parts of this Guide are of most use either while revising and trying to figure out why a particular poem didn't work as well as it should have, or while thinking about what sort of poem you might like to write. If you are serious about becoming an accomplished poet, and want more information than this Guide provides, you may want to find a copy of Robin Skelton's book The Practice of Poetry. I recommend it highly. Even if you are already writing poetry and expressing yourself in verse, it can be a good idea to step back, to return to the basics and build up from there. And if you are just starting to explore poem-writing, it is even more important to begin small. In this part of the Beginner's Guide to Writing Poetry, you'll find some basic exercises that will help illustrate where poetry comes from. More importantly, they will help you find out where your poetry comes from.

So even if you consider yourself an old pro, pause a while and try these poetry exercises. I think you'll find that if you work on them seriously, you can improve your poetry -- no matter how good you already are. And, if nothing else, they're kind of fun.

Word Association

We all know how to play word association games: one person says a word, the next person says the first word they think of after that, and so on. Many words already have built-in associations, too; when someone says "cold," we often think "wet," or "ice," or "dark." The point of this exercise, though, is to find out what words you associate together. The results can often be surprising, and may give the perfect subject for a poem exploring the reasons you make those associations.

For this exercise, you just need to list whatever words come into your head over a set period of time. It works best to do this for about twenty minutes, so you have time to stop being conscious of selecting words and just jot them down as they pop into your head. By the end of the twenty minutes, you should have some interesting sequences of words, ones that may not even seem to be related at first. Look at them and think about them, and see if you can figure out why you thought of them so close together.

Robin Skelton advocates doing this exercise every night just before bed, for at least ten nights in a row, but not more than fourteen nights. He also says you shouldn't read the lists until after the last night.

Then, surveying this confusion of diary jottings, random speculations, word games, nonsense, obscenity, facetiousness, and boredom, one usually discovers something interesting. Around the fourth or fifth day obsessive themes occur; sometimes lines of verse occur; most often, however, one discovers that one has been deeply concerned over something that one had not ever guessed to be at all important. (from The Practice of Poetry)

It is those obsessive concerns that make the best material for real poetry later on. What those concerns are may very well surprise you, which makes them especially good for exploring in verse.

Lists

Making lists is very similar to the word association exercise, except here you place each item (which may be a single word, a group of related words or a complete phrase) on a new line. There are a number of ways you can approach the making of lists, but one that works quite well is to look at an object for a few seconds (if you can get a friend to show you an object you don't know about beforehand, so much the better). Then write down whatever words occur -- whether or not they are related to the object -- for the space of two or three minutes. Don't worry yet about grouping the words or phrases onto separate lines, just write them down. Once you have a group of words, go over them again and, without changing the order of any of them, group them onto separate lines. For example, if your list was "red orange fruit tart sour juicy tingling on my tongue suck the pulp bitter white rind summer," you could arrange them as follows:

    red orange fruit
    tart sour
    juicy
    tingling on my tongue
    suck the pulp
    bitter white rind
    summer

This creates something that is beginning to look like a poem, but isn't quite. Later on, you can take such lists and rearrange, edit, cut words, add words and otherwise improve them. You could very well end up with strange and interesting poems this way.

Collage

This is another exercise I borrowed from Robin Skelton's book The Practice of Poetry. Just as collage in visual arts is the making of new pictures using bits and pieces taken from other people's photographs, paintings, and drawings, collage in poetry is making new poems using bits and pieces of other people's writing (you can use other poems for this exercise, but you can also use lines and phrases from novels, letters, scripts and all sorts of other sources). This often works best using a single volume or collection because then the lines will more likely be written in the same style, but it can be fun to play with this idea using many different sources, as well.

Here's an example I made up very quickly using Charles Darwin's The Voyage of the Beagle as source material (each line was taken whole from the book, but each comes from a different page or chapter):

Darwinian Collage: Lines from The Voyage of the Beagle

    How profoundly ignorant we are,
    so intently absorbed,
    composed of rounded fragments of coral;
    men who do not possess the instinct of those animals,
    a relic of an instinctive passion
    not decreased from the want of novelty.

    They generally prefer running against the wind
    to hear him speak to his wild brother,
    uttering a hoarse roar or bellowing.
    One cannot tell whence it comes from --
    peculiar to the island,
    it was made by some wild beast.

    Perhaps these dances originally represented actions,
    the different islands wonderfully different.
    With his eyes blinded and his mouth choked,
    he did not understand --
    so many thousand miles distant,
    everything tends to this effect.

Interesting, but not quite poetry. Remember that this is a piece I created in a very short time; with greater care over the selection and arrangement of lines, very effective and interesting collage-poems can be created.

The advantage of this exercise is that you can concentrate on arranging the lines in an effective order (something we will explore more in Part 3 of this Guide), without having to worry about the composition of the individual lines. It's also great fun to use people's existing words and play around with their meaning by changing the order and putting together lines that were not originally related. The disadvantage, of course, is that you can't publish this kind of poetry without the permission of the people whose words you borrowed (unless you used public domain sources, in which case you should still note where the lines came from).

Once you have mastered these exercises, and are confident you have lists of associated words that are beginning to express ideas and explore concepts, you need to start working on how to put all the pieces in order. In the next section of this Guide, we'll look at how poems are ordered. Just like fiction, poetry needs a plot, though a poetic plot is not quite the same as a fictional plot. As mentioned in Part 1 of this Guide, writing poetry is about exploring ideas and emotions. Of course, that is not all that is involved; to write poetry, you also have to be able to arrange those things you discover in your exploration. At this point, we are discussing putting the ideas or images in order, not the individual words you use to describe those ideas or images. The really hard part is that you don't want to be too conscious of the process of arranging your ideas, or your poetry will seem mechanical. At the same time you do have to actively arrange the ideas and images (as well as select only the most significant ones to use in the poem). The order in which things are presented can dramatically effect the meaning and impact of a poem, so it is a problem worth considering.

In this section of the Guide, we'll be looking at some of the ways you may choose to order a poem. It is important to remember that a poem must progress; as Robin Skelton says, "It does not matter how many wonderful immediate images, how many magnificent associative leaps, or how many original perceptions you have achieved if you have not got an onward moving plot to sustain them." These "poetic plots" come primarily from Chapter 2 of Skelton's book The Practice of Poetry, so if you want more information, that is a good place to start. Remember that some these plots will work better or worse depending on the material you are using in the poem.

The Image Progression Plot

When you are composing a poem that is primarily a series of images, the image progression plot is probably the most effective plot to use. In this plot, the images in the poem are arranged in some way that makes sense. Some examples of this progression are:

    * moving through the senses as if one were slowly approaching a scene -- the phenomenon is seen, then heard, then smelt, then tasted, then touched. You can order the progression through the senses in other ways, as well; try reversing the order and moving away from the scene.
    * going from vague, abstract images to clear, concrete ones
    * progressing from gentle imagery (soft, misty, warm) to harsh (sharp, loud, burning)
    * increasing the contrast

There are many other progressions one can use to organize the imagery in a poem; simply be aware of the imagery you are using, and group it in whichever way will achieve the effect you want.

The Variations Plot

The variations plot uses, as its name indicates, a series of variations on an idea or image. Each new variation adds something to the subject at hand or presents a new way of looking at it. The poem comes to an end when adding more variation would overload the poem or become redundant. The variations should generally add more to the reader's understanding of the situation.

A good example of the use of the variations plot is the famous sonnet by Elizabeth Barrett Browning:

    How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
    I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
    My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
    For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
    I love thee to the level of everyday's
    Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
    I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
    I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
    I love thee with the passion put to use
    In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
    I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
    With my lost saints -- I love thee with the breath,
    Smiles, tears, of all my life! -- and, if God choose,
    I love thee better after death.

The Dialectic Plot

This kind of plot uses statement and counter-statement -- or debate -- to organize its content. The poem might begin with a question to be answered or not answered, or it may be structured as an actual dialogue.

In the following example, a sonnet by William Shakespeare, the poem begins with a question and the answer to the question isn't really the obvious one: the woman is not like a summer's day, but superior to one.

    Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
    Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
    Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May
    And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
    Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
    And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
    And every fair from fair sometime declines,
    By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd.
    But thy eternal summer shall not fade
    Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
    Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
    When in eternal lines to time thou growest.
    So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
    So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

The Unanswered Question Plot

The unanswered question plot uses an unanswered question to create suspense by presenting a mystery. It can be a very effective way of creating something that needs to be explored, which you then do in the poem. Generally, the question is still not explicitly answered by the end of the poem, leaving the reader to ponder the clues and figure out what answer is implied. It can be difficult to achieve this ideal, but it makes for an effective work.

"The Listeners" by Walter de la Mare uses the unanswered question plot to great effect:

    "Is there anybody there?" said the Traveller,
    Knocking on the moonlit door;
    And his horse in the silence champed the grasses
    Of the forest's ferny floor:
    And a bird flew up out of the turret,
    Above the Traveller's head
    And he smote upon the door again a second time;
    "Is there anybody there?" he said.
    But no one descended to the Traveller;
    No head from the leaf-fringed sill
    Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,
    Where he stood perplexed and still.
    But only a host of phantom listeners
    That dwelt in the lone house then
    Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
    To that voice from the world of men:
    Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,
    That goes down to the empty hall,
    Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken
    By the lonely Traveller's call.
    And he felt in his heart their strangeness,
    Their stillness answering his cry,
    While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,
    'Neath the starred and leafy sky;
    For he suddenly smote on the door, even
    Louder, and lifted his head: --
    "Tell them I came, and no one answered,
    That I kept my word," he said.
    Never the least stir made the listeners,
    Though every word he spake
    Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
    From the one man left awake:
    Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
    And the sound of iron on stone,
    And how the silence surged softly backward,
    When the plunging hoofs were gone.

The Contrast Plot

As indicated by its name, the contrast plot uses contrast. A poem with this kind of plot might begin with an image that seems too good to be true, then contrasts it with reality. As Skelton says, "They can do it by beginning with an assertion so idealistic, challenging, or inconclusive that the reader cannot accept it without saying 'So what?' " The poem then presents a contrast to the initial assertion.

Another Walter de la Mare poem is a good example of poetry with a contrast plot; the poem is "An Epitaph."

    Here lies a most beautiful lady,
    Light of step and heart was she;
    I think she was the most beautiful lady
    That ever was in the West Country.

    But beauty vanishes; beauty passes;
    However rare -- rare it be;
    And when I crumble, who will remember
    This lady of the West Country?

The Narrative Plot

A narrative poem is a poem with a narrative plot; it is a poem that tells a story. The specific details of this kind of plot will depend on the story you want to tell; you might try working with this kind of plot the same way you would work with a plot in fiction (though generally -- but not always -- narrative poetry is shorter than narrative prose). You can find out more about narrative poems in the glossary entry "narrative poem."

Many of these plots can be combined together to produce hybrids. You could, for example, combine the dialectic plot with the unanswered question plot to great effect. The only limit is how far you are willing to experiment. Play around with these plots and see what you can come up with. Remember: the plot is the servant of the poem, not the other way around. Diction

When you know what topics are the ones you want/need/must write about, you still need to find the words to express and explore those topics. A large part of finding the right words is in choosing diction. Diction is the range of vocabulary used in writing. You can talk about Shakespearean diction or Miltonian diction (the diction used by Shakespeare and Milton), and you can think about diction on a smaller scale, such as the use of a narrator with their own distinct voice that may not be the same as the voice of the poet. In this part of the Beginner's Guide to Writing Poetry, we'll explore some ideas about diction -- is there a special language for poetry, or do we each need to find our own sets of words?

Poetic Language

Do you ever find yourself writing poetry with lines like these:

    You, with your adamantine sword,
    that has shattered in your hand,
    have fallen from that height upon which you stood
    to grovel in the dust.

When you're writing a rhymed or metered poem, do you find yourself rearranging the words so they'll fit? Note especially line 4 in this example:

    The weekend was like any other
    I went to a movie with Mother
    The movie was great
    Lots of popcorn I ate
    And the movie star looked like my brother

(Those two examples above were drawn from my own high school and first-year university poetry.) Why do we sometimes try to write like ancient poets of yore, instead of the contemporary people we are?

In the eighteenth century, many poets (and others) thought that poetry should have a style and language different from prose and different from everyday language. The poet Thomas Grey even said that "the language of the age is never the language of poetry." This poetic diction was characterized by some combination of the following: fanciful epithets (the finny tribe to mean "fish"), stock adjectives (balmy breezes), classical references (referring to Greek and Roman myth), ornate usage, complex figures of speech, unusual or complex word order, sentimentality, and archaism (choosing archaic over contemporary words -- such as thine instead of "your").

The "flowery" writing you may sometimes find yourself using to write poetry is a holdover from this old idea about how poetry should sound. You've probably read a lot of poetry like that in school -- Milton, Dryden, Tennyson, Marvell and others -- and so you begin to think that that is what poetry ought to sound like. Not long after poetic diction was in fashion, though, other poets began to argue against it, saying that poetry should be written in a language accessible to all. Of course, poetry will always use language artificially, due to the process of selection and compression. Even free verse will not be entirely natural.

The best way for you, as a contemporary poet, to learn how other contemporary poets use language is to read a lot of contemporary poetry by many different poets. Every artist or craftsperson must be aware of what is happening in their field now, not just what has happened in the past (though that is important, too). Poetry is no different. Which isn't to say you can't develop your own style, your own diction. You can, but it will be a gradual process that happens over the course of your poetry-writing career.

Finding the Words

Robin Skelton talks about the tendency of young writers to use archaic-sounding, "poetic" writing and abstract concepts like love and loyalty (without reference to concrete examples, that is) as a kind of evasiveness, a "refusal to face one's own character and situation" (from The Practice of Poetry). In Part 1 of this Guide, I talked about finding the right topics for your poetry within yourself. The same idea can be used in finding the diction, the kind of vocabulary, to use in your poetry. If you have a tendency towards poetic diction, try deliberately writing in a way that is as close to your own speaking voice as you can get.

One way to describe this is as Skelton does: "The art of finding appropriate diction is the art of adjusting the implied personality of the speaker to the nature of his vision, or vice versa." In other words, put your experiences, ideas, thoughts and images in your voice. Or, if you are writing about someone else (real person or invented character), use the kind of language they would use to write the poem.

If you want to imply that the narrator of your poem is smart and sophisticated or highly educated, for example, try using polysyllabic words whose meanings are a little on the abstract side (but don't get too abstract, or you'll just confuse your reader). Serendipity is a good example of this sort of word, or expertise. If your speaker is a down-to-earth, plain-and-simple sort, try using more ordinary, concrete words like dirt, shovel or fence. Obscenity is usually taken to imply an uneducated speaker, even though the most highly educated person in the world probably swears. These examples likely seem a little stereotyped, and they are, but the point is that a reader has expectations and you can use those expectations to add to the meaning of your poem.

You can also fool around with those expectations your readers have, as is common with comic verse. A good example of this is the following poem from Lewis Carroll, in which the first four lines set the reader up to expect a romantic ballad (both language and imagery contribute to this idea). Someone who knows balladry would then be expecting some kind of critical statement, but instead they get a rather different kind of comment.

    The sun was shining on the sea,
    Shining with all his might
    He did his very best to make
    The billows smooth and bright --
    And this was odd because it was
    The middle of the night.

There are other ways you can use diction to add to or modify the implications of your poetry. Read poems by many different poets to see what they do. Try this exercise, too: choose a poem you like that has a fairly distinctive narrative voice (for help on narrative voice, see Part 5 of the Beginner's Guide to Writing Fiction); then re-write the poem, keeping the basic meaning of the words the same, but using a completely different voice (your own, perhaps, or that of a character you have invented). Compare the original poem with your re-write to see how a different voice saying essentially the same thing can change the "meaning" of the poem considerably. There is a really good example of this using three different translations of Homer's Odyssey in chapter 4 of Skelton's book, along with many examples of different dictions in use.

Don't be afraid to experiment. Once you've got a poem on paper, you can't lose it. Wrote it down, print it out, and put it in a safe place. Then try changing things. Use a different voice or a different range of vocabulary. Play with your words. Prosody

The study and theory of versification is called "prosody." Prosody was originally an attempt to classify and understand poetry, and later provided the rules for how poetry should be written. In English, prosody is primarily concerned with rhythm and metre (covered in this Part of the Guide), rhyme (see Part 6) and stanza form (see Part 8). This part of the Beginner's Guide to Writing Poetry introduces prosody, beginning with rhythm.

Although it seems that prosody should be primarily concerned with strict forms of poetry, the principles of rhythm are also useful in free verse. Free verse doesn't follow a set of rules, but it often benefits from an underlying rhythmic structure. (Even prose often has rhythm.) If you write free verse, explore this section of the Guide anyway; you never what you'll find to help you improve your writing.

Stress in Poetry

You may have learned in school about how poetic meters are based on varying numbers and sequences of stressed and unstressed syllables (and, if you look at any of the entries on metre and feet in the glossary, you'll find the same thing). This is generally true, but a poet must be aware that actual words are much more subtle than that. Look at these lines from Shakespeare:

    Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
    Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
    Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May
    And summer's lease hath all too short a date.

These are the first four lines of a sonnet, and the sonnet form must be written in iambic pentameter. This means that, if we represent stressed syllables with "/" and unstressed syllables with "U," each of these lines has a rhythmic structure that looks like this:

U / U / U / U / U /

But look at those lines again and read them out loud. Do you say "shall I comPARE thee TO a SUmmer's DAY"? Not really. The stresses and emphases and pauses are much more varied and subtle than that. Big deal, right? Nice theory. But you can use this information as a poet. It means that when you are working on a poem, especially one with a strong rhythmic structure, you need to pay attention to more than just the bare stressed/unstressed syllables (and, believe me, paying attention can very quickly improve the quality of your writing).

Speaking Your Poetry Aloud

The Shakespeare example above demonstrated why it is so important to read your poetry aloud when you are composing. Even when you are following a strict poetic form, and even if you are aiming for archaic diction, poetry is still based on speech. Unless you are writing concrete poetry that exists only to be looked at (see Part 7), you need to be aware of what your poetry will sound like. Part of that is making sure, as Robin Skelton says, that any given line is "capable of being spoken aloud with ease and in such a manner that the speaker remains a credible human being" (from The Practice of Poetry). Even novelists will often read passages of their text aloud to check the flow of the words, and novels are assumed to be generally read to oneself.

Rhythm is More Than Stressed vs Unstressed Syllables

Returning to our lines from Shakespeare's sonnet again, what are some of the subtleties you noticed in rhythm? What is there to pay attention to besides stressed and unstressed syllables? To begin with, you probably noticed syllables that have stress, just not as much as other syllables. There are at least three levels of stress, then, rather than the usually-mentioned two (stressed and unstressed). If you wanted to, you could divide stress into many more levels, but for now it is enough to know that there are variations to listen for.

Besides stress, there are also pauses of various lengths. Some of these pauses are obvious, and may be caused by line breaks and punctuation. Other pauses can come simply from combinations of certain words and sounds. Similarly, some words and sounds are pronounced more quickly than others, so speed is also a factor in rhythm. There are times when you simply have to slow down to speak; compare, for example, the relative ease in pronouncing "to a summer's day" and "summer's lease hath all" -- both have the same number of syllables.

Differences in pitch are also important to consider. Think about how you would say these sentences aloud:

He had a bunch of daisies in his hand.
He had a bunch of daisies in his hand?

The words are the same, but in the second sentence the pitch rises at the end to signal a question to a listener. There are other places where the pitch will change in lines of poetry. Learn to hear them in your own work, and you will be able to use pitch to alter the rhythm and impact of your poems.

Of course, different readers may very well read differently -- they may find the stresses and pauses and changes-of-pitch in different places. The important thing is to get it right to your ear.

Poetry Problem Solving With Prosody

While all of this is very nice in theory, you may be wondering how it applies to the actual practice of poetry. I've tried to point out a few ways you can use prosody and the theory of rhythmic structure already, but there is one very important thing I haven't yet mentioned: fixing problems in rhythm.

Most of us who have ever written a poem, especially one in a structured form, have found that we'll write a stanza or two that seem to work very well, but then we'll hit a point where we just can't quite get the rhythm to match. If you've been looking only at stressed and unstressed syllables, it can be difficult to see where the stanzas that don't sound right are going wrong. The solution is prosody: look more closely at the stanzas that work and figure out how they are structured, beyond stressed/unstressed. You don't necessarily need to go into microscopic detail, but figure out the deeper structure until you think you can see what's really going on with those lines. Then compare that to the lines and stanzas that don't work. Quite likely you'll find the problem is with more subtle layers of stress, or with varying pauses, or some combination of the topics we've discussed here. You can also use this kind of analysis to introduce small but effective variations in the rhythmic structure of your poem, if you feel the structure is becoming too regimented.

Above all else (and I try to say this as often as I can), don't be afraid to experiment.

If you want more information on poetic metre, you may find the following glossary articles useful: metre, monometer, dimeter, trimeter, tetrameter, pentameter, hexameter, heptameter, octameter. Metrical feet, the units of measurement of poetic metres , include: iamb, trochee, dactyl, anapest, and spondee. Repeating Yourself

Have you ever tried to memorize something by repeating it over and over to yourself? Repetition emphasizes whatever it is that is repeated, making it stand out so the reader knows it is important. If you repeat a word or a line in poetry, then that word or line (or those words or lines) appears to be more important than other parts of the poem. In fact, in a poem with repeating lines, all of the other lines are often comments on or elaborations of the repeated line.

Repetition can also affect the rhythm (see Part 5) of a poem and the way it sounds. In particular, repetition of individual sounds or groups of sounds can strengthen the rhythmic structure.

Repetition of Words and Phrases

As I said, the repetition of words, phrases and whole lines puts emphasis on those parts of a poem. It can create a nice overall rhythm for the poem as well (as opposed to the rhythm of individual lines).

Some forms of poetry -- the ones referred to as "obsessive" forms -- use the repetition of whole lines as part of their structure. In these forms, many of the lines are repeated, so no single line is emphasized more than the others. The effect varies with the particular form, but a sense of hurry often results from the definite rhythm established by the repeating lines. Consider this example, "When I Saw You Last, Rose," a villanelle by Austin Dobson:

    When I saw you last, Rose,
    You were only so high;--
    How fast the time goes!

    Like a bud ere it blows,
    You just peeped at the sky,
    When I saw you last, Rose!

    Now your petals unclose,
    Now your May-time is nigh;--
    How fast the time goes!

    And a life,--how it grows!
    You were scarcely so shy,
    When I saw you last, Rose.

    In your bosom it shows
    There's a guest on the sly;
    How fast the time goes!

    Is it Cupid? Who knows!
    Yet you used not to sigh,
    When I saw you last, Rose;
    How fast the time goes!

The repetition of "When I saw you last, Rose" and "How fast the time goes" creates a sense that the narrator has become obsessed with the passing of time. Those lines re-occurring at regular intervals, along with the added rhythmic nature of the rhyme, adds to the feeling of time rushing past.

Incremental Repetition

Sometimes a poet may choose to repeat lines, but change them slightly each time, adding bit by bit to the meaning. This is called incremental repetition. This kind of repetition is very common in folk ballads, and was, among other things, an aid to the memory of the singer. Here's an example, the traditional ballad "Our Goodman."

    Hame came our goodman,
    And hame came he,
    And then he saw a saddle-horse,
    Where nae horse should be.

    "What's this now, goodwife?
    What's this I see?
    How came this horse here,
    Without the leave o me?"

"A horse?" quo she.
"Ay, a horse," quo he.

    "Shame fa your cuckold face,
    Ill mat ye see!
    'Tis naething but a broad sow,
    My minnie sent to me."

"A broad sow?" quo he.
"Ay, a sow," quo she.

    "Far hae I ridden,
    And farer hae I gane,
    But a saddle on a sow's back
    I never saw nane.

    Hame came our goodman,
    And hame came he,
    He spy'd a pair of jack-boots,
    Where nae boots should be.

    "What's this now, goodwife?
    What's this I see?
    How came these boots here,
    Without the leave o me?"

"Boots?" quo she.
"Ay, boots," quo he.

    "Shame fa your cuckold face,
    And ill mat ye see!
    It's but a pair of water-stoups,
    My minnie sent to me."

"Water-stoups?" quo he.
"Ay, water-stoups," quo she.

    "Far hae I ridden,
    And farer hae I gane,
    But siller spurs on water-stoups
    I never saw nane.

This structure repeats several more times, building the plot and eventually leading to a conclusion. If you'd like to read the whole poem and see how it works, see the incremental repetition definition in the glossary).

Not all incremental repetition is this elaborate. It may be only a single line repeating with variation at the end of each stanza. Have a look at some traditional ballads to see other possibilities. If you are interested in songwriting, this is a good topic to pursue, as many of the same techniques are used today.

Repetition of Line Structure

In addition to exact and incremental repetition, the repetition of line structure can also be a useful tool. This is very similar to incremental repetition, but instead of adding to the meaning of an almost identical line (or group of lines, as in the example above), here the poet uses the lines to set up a rhythm that is almost like the chanting of a spell. Here is an example from my own poetry, written in my late teens:

    As the raven flies, so speed me to my destiny.
    As the eagle sees, so show me where to go.
    As the wolf howls, so let me hear life's music.
    As the deer runs, so keep me safe from harm.
    As the stars shine, so light for me my path.
    As the hound tracks, so let me follow.
    Give me courage that I may face destiny without fear;
    But with guidance, music in my heart, and a sure path to follow.

Notice how abandoning the repeated structure in the final two lines breaks up the rhythm and signals that the poem is concluding. Instead of following the same structure, these two lines repeat some of the words and images of the previous lines, summing up what has gone before.

Repetition of Sounds

Even more than the repetition of lines, the repetition of sounds can emphasize or add to the rhythm of a poem. Robin Skelton says, in The Practice of Poetry, "rhyme can create chiming sound patterns that make even the least enterprising statements appear well ordered and poised." This is what makes rhyme so attractive to novice poets, but rhyme is unfortunately very easy to overuse. Other kinds of sound repetition -- alliteration, assonance and consonance -- also create that rhythmic feel or chiming sound, but they seem to be less used by new writers. There are many things to explore beyond rhyme and many kinds of rhyme to explore besides perfect end rhyme.

Rhyme of Many Kinds

Perfect rhyming words are limited in number in English (or any other language), so perfect rhyme (also called rich rhyme) is easy to overuse. Only so many words rhyme with "love," so most of these rhyming combinations have become cliché. But perfect rhyme is only one of several possible types of rhyme, and each of those other types present better possibilities for interesting rhymes.

In perfect rhyme, rhyming words have a different initial sound, but any following sounds are identical. But instead of trying to find a perfect rhyme for "orange" (there isn't one), why not try a half rhyme? In half rhyme, only the final consonant sound is the same (assuming the words end with a consonant). Other variations of rhyme include masculine, feminine and triple rhyme.

The placement of rhyme is another issue to consider. Most new poets put their rhyming words at the ends of lines. This is called end rhyme, and has the effect of punctuating the lines (almost like a period or comma). These final words also tend to acquire considerable emphasis -- placement at the end of line emphasizes a word anyway; with added rhyme it becomes even stronger. This can, of course, be used very effectively. It is also very easy to overuse, though, especially when combined with perfect rhyme.

break 1

The other possibility for the placement of rhyme is within the lines. This is called internal rhyme. A good example of internal rhyme that shows how it affects the overall poem is Percy Bysshe Shelley's "The Cloud." Here is the first stanza:

    I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,
    From the seas and the streams;
    I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
    In their noon-day dreams.
    From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
    The sweet buds every one,
    When rocked to rest on their mother's breast,
    As she dances about the Sun.
    I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
    And whiten the green plains under,
    And then again I dissolve it in rain,
    And laugh as I pass in thunder.

Notice how the alternation of internal rhyme in the odd-numbered lines and end rhyme between the even-numbered lines keeps the overall rhythm from becoming too staccato.

To explore the types and possibilities of rhyme further, see the article What's a Rhyme -- and What Isn't?.

Alliteration, Assonance and Consonance

Other kinds of sound repetition can also be considered kinds of rhyme, though they are usually discussed separately. Like rhyme, they create what Skelton calls "tuneful speech." Alliteration is the repetition of initial sounds in two or more words. Where the repetition is of sound in the middles of words, it is called medial alliteration. Assonance and consonance are similar; assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds in nearby words with different consonants, while consonance is the repetition of consonant sounds in nearby words with different vowel sounds.

The uses and effects of these kinds of repetition are much like those of rhyme, except they are often more subtle. Alliteration was very important in Anglo-Saxon poetry, the forerunner of modern English verse. In the epic Beowulf, for example, alliteration helps tie the lines together and create a sense of rhythm.

Adding it All Up

As you can see, there are all sorts of possibilities for repetition in poetry, and each one has a slightly different effect. Rhythm can be underlined, phrases can be emphasized and individual words can be made to stand out. Before you settle for the same old perfect end rhyme, give some of these other kinds of repetition a try and see what you can make of them! Un-rhymed and Un-Metered Poetry

Just like "poetic language" (see Part 4), rhymed and metered poetry can seem archaic and old-fashioned. Less structured poetry is predominant these days, but that doesn't mean you should abandon all the principles of poetry and write any old words. Poetry isn't just prose broken up into separate lines, it still has rhythm. Prose and poetry sound quite different when read aloud.

So what are your options if you don't want your poetry to rhyme? You could go with blank verse, which has metre, but no rhyme. Or you could get rid of metre, too, and write free verse. Another option is concrete poetry, which is written more for the eye than for the ear.

Free Verse Poetry

When most people think of free verse, they think of poetry that is written without any rhyme, metre or rhythm. New poets tend to focus on the "free" part and write down whatever comes out of their head and then leave it as is, with very little or no editing. While writing this way is a good way to loosen up and get the ideas flowing, you should remember that there is a "verse" aspect to this kind of poetry, as well. While free verse has no regular metrical pattern, it does have rhythm. That, along with the use of concentrated language and sometimes other poetic devices, is what makes it poetry instead of prose chopped up into lines.

The primary mark of free verse is its lack of strict metre; it can actually rhyme if the poet chooses. It can also make use of alliteration and other poetic devices. A good example of rhymed (though not perfect feminine rhyme -- see Part 6) and alliterative free verse is Walt Whitman's "Patroling Barnegat":

    Wild, wild the storm, and the high sea running,
    Steady the roar of the gale, with incessant undertone muttering,
    Shouts of demoniac laughter fitfully piercing and pealing

Notice especially how, even though the lines are not metrical, the choice of words has created a wonderful rhythm in the lines. Even where there is no rhyme, free verse has some kind of metre that you can hear when the lines are read aloud. Try reading this example out loud:

    When I heard the learn'd astronomer,
    When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
    When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
    When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture room,
    How soon unaccountably I became tired and sick . . .

This is more from Walt Whitman, who was a master of using poetic devices with free verse. If you read it over carefully, it is possible to break the lines up into rhythmic units. These units often have the same number of stresses, though they sometimes only seem the same, perhaps because they are the same length when spoken. The thing to remember is that you can use metre and poetic devices to make your free verse flow better -- to make it verse as well as free.

Blank Verse

It's easy to confuse blank verse and free verse, but the difference is metre: free verse doesn't have any and blank verse does. More specifically, blank verse is unrhymed poetry in (usually) iambic pentameter. Like rhymed metrical poetry, the metre in blank verse can become too repetitive when used for very long poems, so poets often vary the metre here and there. A good work to look at for examples of blank verse is Milton's Paradise Lost:

    Of Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit
    Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal tast
    Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,
    With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
    Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat,
    Sing Heav'nly Muse, that on the secret top
    Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
    That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen Seed,
    In the Beginning how the Heav'ns and Earth
    Rose out of Chaos. Or if Sion Hill
    Delight thee more, and Siloa's Brook that flow'd
    Fast by the Oracle of God; I thence
    Invoke thy aid to my adventrous Song,
    That with no middle flight intends to soar
    Above th' Aonian Mount, while it pursues
    Things unattempted yet in Prose or Rhime.

Compare this to the Shakespearean sonnet in Part 3 (under the heading "The Dialectic Plot"). Both these poems are in the same metre -- iambic pentameter -- only the sonnet is rhymed and Paradise Lost is not. You could borrow this idea and write unrhymed verse in other metres if you wanted to; the only limit is your imagination.

Concrete Poetry: Lines for the Eye

Concrete poetry is written almost entirely for visual effect. The lines form shapes, while the words tend to reflect the sense of the poem. This is not the kind of poetry that can be read aloud. An example is a poem by Ian Hamilton Finlay in which the words "au pair girl" are repeated over and over to create the shape of a pear.

It can be difficult to create concrete poetry that is very significant, but the techniques can be used in other kinds of poetry to create interesting effects and emphasize pauses -- among other things.

between green
mountains
sings the flinger
of
fire beyond red rivers

e.e. cummings

You can take this kind of thing much farther -- who knows, maybe you could even combine free verse and concrete poetry to create a poem that works just as well for the ear as for the eye.

Perhaps it seems like I have taken the simple concept of free verse and made it too complicated by adding concepts like rhythm that seem to belong to more structured forms of poetry. But remember that poetry is poetry because it is something different from prose; it is somehow elevated, even if you choose to use a colloquial voice. Give your verse a little rhythm and see if you can make it sing! Poetry in Forms

Do the words rondel, sonnet, villanelle or eclogue sound familiar, or do they seem bizarre and esoteric? These words all refer to forms of poetry. A poetic form involves some kind of structural formula dictating how it is to be written. This formula can involve rules of metre, rhyme scheme, line length, stanza structure and more. Some forms also have restrictions on subject matter.

Forms can generally be divided into abstract forms (which includes obsessive forms) and genre forms, each of which will be discussed below. The history of poetry is a mosaic of forms, with different ones coming into and going out of favour, and brilliant poets making changes to existing forms and inventing new ones. Not only is this a fascinating study for new poets (and experienced poets, too) it is a useful study that can lead to a better understanding of poetry and a greater facility with writing.

Why Study Poetic Forms?

Robin Skelton wrote, "It is my belief that no poet can achieve real success unless he learns to understand the nature of existing forms and genres" (from The Practice of Poetry). Skelton was a strict taskmaster, but he was also right. In any art, or craft, or scholarly discipline, it is necessary to understand what came before. To write without an awareness of the past can result in the production of something that seems novel and brilliant to the writer, but just another mediocre attempt at something that's already been done a million times to a reader.

Not only must a poet know the past in order to attempt originality, but a mastery and understanding of the technical aspects of poetry, the details and techniques, can only make one a better writer. You wouldn't expect someone to sculpt something like Michelangelo's David the first time they put a chisel to a block of stone, would you? Nor would you expect it the second time, or the third, or probably even the hundredth.

The point is, strict forms of poetry may seem confining, but if you can write a gorgeous sonnet or a clever villanelle, think how much better you'll be at free verse when you have no rules to confine you. Study rhythm and metre and how they are put together to make poetic forms and you will better understand how all poetry works (including free verse).

Abstract Forms

The abstract forms of poetry -- forms like sonnet, rondeau, roundel, rondel, triolet, pantoum and ballade (not to be confused with ballad) -- follow particular structural formulae and are of a definite length (a limited number of lines). There is no limitation on the subject matter in these poems, though the forms may lend themselves more easily to some subjects and work less well with others. A familiar example of an abstract form is the sonnet (a fourteen-line poem in iambic pentameter, usually with an ababcdcdefefgg rhyme scheme). Here is one by William Shakepeare:

    When I have seen by Time's fell hand defac'd
    The rich proud cost of outworn buried age;
    When sometime lofty towers I see down raz'd,
    And brass eternal slave to mortal rage;
    When I have seen the hungry ocean gain
    Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
    And the firm soil win of the watery main,
    Increasing store with loss and loss with store:
    When I have seen such interchange of state,
    Or state itself confounded to decay,
    Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate-
    That Time will come and take my love away.
    This thought is as a death, which cannot choose
    But weep to have that which it fears to lose.

Read this poem aloud to get a feel for the effects of metre and rhyme. Do you think the form of the poem contributes to the overall feel and enhances the subject matter? Think about what kind of poem you might write using this form or one of the other abstract forms.

Obsessive Forms

The obsessive forms -- such as villanelle, sestina and canzone -- are a specific subset of the abstract forms. Like other abstract forms, obsessive forms have structural formulae and set lengths (though poets over the years have modified the lengths of some forms). They also have lines and words repeated in specific patterns which produces the effect of obsession (hence the term obsessive forms). The villanelle (a nineteen-line poem composed of five three-line stanzas followed by one four-line stanza) makes a good example; here is one by Oscar Wilde:

Theocritus

    O singer of Persephone!
    In the dim meadows desolate
    Dost thou remember Sicily?

    Still through the ivy flits the bee
    Where Amaryllis lies in state;
    O Singer of Persephone!

    Simaetha calls on Hecate
    And hears the wild dogs at the gate;
    Dost thou remember Sicily?

    Still by the light and laughing sea
    Poor Polypheme bemoans his fate;
    O Singer of Persephone!

    And still in boyish rivalry
    Young Daphnis challenges his mate;
    Dost thou remember Sicily?

    Slim Lacon keeps a goat for thee,
    For thee the jocund shepherds wait;
    O Singer of Persephone! Dost thou remember Sicily?

Notice that there are only two rhymes in this form, resulting in an aba aba aba aba aba abaa rhyme scheme. Another aspect of the structural formula is the patterned repetition of lines, which results in the obsessive undertones of the work. The first line of the poem is also the last line of stanzas two and four, and the second-to-last line of the whole poem. And the last line of stanza one is also the last line of stanzas three, five and six (and thus also the last line of the poem).

Genre Forms

The genre forms -- for example ballad, ode and eclogue -- also have structural formulae but, unlike the abstract forms, they have no strict length limitations. Genre forms do have one further aspect, though: a limitation on subject matter. Each of the genre forms have different subjects that are appropriate.

There are also genres of poetry that don't have specific forms associated with them. Some of these are satire, epic, elegy and lyric. And there are related terms that don't really describe either genres or genre forms, but do refer to modes and attitudes; these include dramatic monologue, pastoral, hymn and allegory. Even though these aren't forms, they are related and they are useful things to consider alongside form.

To think about how subject matter is limited in a particular form, compare the following two ballads (you'll find a third in the glossary entry for ballad. Also compare the stanza structure and the overall length of the poems.

Twa Corbies

    As I was walking all alane,
    I heard twa corbies making a mane;
    The tane unto the t'other say,
    "Where sall we gang and dine to-day,
    Where sall we gang and dine to-day?

    "In behint yon auld fail dyke,
    I wot there lies a new slain knight;
    And naebody kens that he lies there,
    But his hawk, his honnd, and lady fair,
    His hawk, his honnd, and lady fair.

    "His hound is to the hunting gane,
    His hawk to fetch the wild-fowl hame,
    His lady 'a ta'en another mate,
    So we may mak our dinner sweet,
    We may mak our dinner sweet.

    "Ye'll sit on his white hause-bane,
    And I'll pike out his bonny blue een;
    Wi ae lock o his gowden hair
    We'll theek our nest when it grows bare,
    We'll theek our nest when it grows bare.

    "Mony a one for him makes mane,
    But nane sall ken where he is gane;
    Oer his white banes, when they are bare,
    The wind sail blaw for evennair,
    The wind sail blaw for evennair."

Thomas the Rhymer

    True Thomas lay on Huntlie Bank,
    A ferlie he spied wi' his eye
    And there he saw a lady bright,
    Come riding down by Eildon Tree.

    Her shirt was o the grass-green silk,
    Her mantle o the velvet fyne
    At ilka tett of her horse's mane
    Hang fifty siller bells and nine.

    True Thomas, he pulld aff his cap,
    And louted low down to his knee
    "All hail, thou mighty Queen of Heaven!
    For thy peer on earth I never did see."

    "O no, O no, Thomas," she said,
    "That name does not belang to me;
    I am but the queen of fair Elfland,
    That am hither come to visit thee."

    "Harp and carp, Thomas," she said,
    "Harp and carp along wi' me,
    And if ye dare to kiss my lips,
    Sure of your bodie I will be."

    "Betide me weal, betide me woe,
    That weird shall never daunton me;"
    Syne he has kissed her rosy lips,
    All underneath the Eildon Tree.

    "Now, ye maun go wi me," she said,
    "True Thomas, ye maun go wi me,
    And ye maun serve me seven years,
    Thro weal or woe, as may chance to be."

    She mounted on her milk-white steed,
    She's taen True Thomas up behind,
    And aye wheneer her bridle rung,
    The steed flew swifter than the wind.

    O they rade on, and farther on --
    The steed gaed swifter than the wind --
    Untill they reached a desart wide,
    And living land was left behind.

    "Light down, light down, now, True Thomas,
    And lean your head upon my knee;
    Abide and rest a little space,
    And I will shew you ferlies three."

    "O see ye not that narrow road,
    So thick beset with thorns and briars?
    That is the path of righteousness,
    Tho after it but few enquires.

    "And see not ye that braid braid road,
    That lies across that lily leven?
    That is the path to wickedness,
    Tho some call it the road to heaven.

    "And see not ye that bonny road,
    That winds about the fernie brae?
    That is the road to fair Elfland,
    Where thou and I this night maun gae.

    "But, Thomas, ye maun hold your tongue,
    Whatever ye may hear or see,
    For, if you speak word in Elflyn land,
    Ye'll neer get back to your ain countrie."

    O they rade on, and farther on,
    And they waded thro rivers aboon the knee,
    And they saw neither sun nor moon,
    But they heard the roaring of the sea.

    It was mirk mirk night, and there was nae stern light,
    And they waded thro red blude to the knee;
    For a' the blude that's shed on earth
    Rins thro the springs o that countrie.

    Syne they came on to a garden green,
    And she pu'd an apple frae the tree:
    "Take this for thy wages, True Thomas,
    It will give the tongue that can never lie."

    "My tongue is mine ain," True Thomas said;
    "A gudely gift ye was gie to me!
    I neither dought to buy nor sell,
    At fair or tryst where I may be.

    "I dought neither speak to prince or peer,
    Nor ask of grace from fair ladye:"
    "Now hold thy peace," the lady said,
    "For as I say, so must it be."

    He has gotten a coat of the even cloth,
    And a pair of shoes of velvet green,
    And till seven years were gane and past
    True Thomas on earth was never seen.

Can you see the similarity in subject matter between these poems? Besides similar subjects, they also share a similar stanza structure (the last line of each stanza in "Twa Corbies" is repeated as part of singing it, and can be ignored for our purposes). The difference in length of each whole poem is quite marked, however.

Non-English Forms

Many of the forms discussed above were originally created in languages other than English -- the villanelle, for example, is a form originally used by troubadours in Provence -- but they have long been established in English poetry (the villanelle, to continue the example, has been used in English poetry since the time of Chaucer). Because these forms have been in use so long and because they came from languages relatively closely related to English, they work very well with English poetry.

There are many more forms used in the poetry of other languages, however. If you happen to speak other languages, it would be a good exercise to take some of the poetry forms from whatever languages you know well and try using them with English, or to try some of the English forms with your other languages. You will probably find that some forms adapt fairly easily, while others simply don't work due to the differences in language. Some poetry forms may be based on tones, for example, which are of very little importance in English; trying to write a tone-based poetry form in English would likely be an exercise in frustration.

Simpler forms (and simpler does not really mean easier, or less beautiful) such as the Japanese haiku can be used to good effect in English, though I suspect haikus in Japanese are probably much more beautiful and profound. If you do write in a language other than English, explore the poetic forms of that language and see what you can create.

Writing in Forms

Form can be invented to suit a particular poem -- you don't have to use one of the existing forms. In a sense, every poem has a form even if it doesn't follow one of the forms discussed above (this might make more sense if you think of two separate words that both happen to be spelled F-O-R-M -- one means "shape" and the other means "set of rules or guidelines").

A poet may begin a poem with some idea (or even an exact notion) of the form the poem will take. Sometimes the poem will easily fit and other times the form evolves and changes as the poem comes into being. Just as writing a poem is an exploration of a thought or feeling or image, it can also be a discovery of form. Don't be too strict when trying to write in forms. If you wanted to write a sonnet about failing Biology and it just won't work, try a different form or invent a new one; try a different topic for your sonnet and see what happens. Reading and Revising Poetry

The most important things a writer can learn are how to read -- how to read the work of others and how to read their own work -- and how to revise. Unfortunately, like many aspects of writing, these are things (revising, especially) that each writer has to work out for themselves. More experienced writers can only offer tips on what has worked for them, and hope that some of their advice will help. So read this article with the idea in mind that you'll have to try things out and see how they work for you.

What to Read

With so many books out there, and more being published every year, you may wonder what, exactly, you should be reading. The short answer is "read everything." You never know what you may find as you browse through a magazine, an encyclopaedia or even a biology textbook. Ideas and inspiration come from the oddest places. So read anything you come across that holds even the slightest interest, be it fiction, poetry or non-fiction. The more you know, the more raw material you have for making poetry.

Of course, it isn't really practical to read everything. Not literally, anyway. That's where you have to start figuring out what reading material is going to give you the most benefit. If you want to be a poet, then you'll need to read poetry. Lots of poetry. Find what you like and read as much of it as you can, but don't limit yourself. If you adore the poetry of Yeats, by all means read everything he wrote, but then try reading some contemporary poets. You are, after all, a contemporary writer, and you'll never make it as a poet today if your only influence is Yeats.

Try this: Go to a library or bookstore, find the poetry section, and spend some time taking books randomly off the shelf and reading a poem or two. When you find a writer whose work really speaks to you, get a whole book of their stuff and read it all. See if you can figure out what it is about the work that so affects you. Think about how you can adapt this to make your own work more effective. Then go back to that library and read randomly some more.

Look at some literary magazines to see what's happening in poetry right now. Don't be afraid to have opinions, but try to understand why you have those opinions. Why do you like the work of one writer and not another? Really dig in and get as clear as you can on why you have the opinions you do; it can only help in figuring out what you want to do with your own poetry.

Essentially, read as much and as widely as you have time for. Focus your reading, but don't limit it (in other words, read what you think will be useful, but don't forbid yourself to read trashy novels or technical treatises on the life cycle of the platypus; who knows what snippets might be useful).

For more on why and what writers should read, see "The Importance of Reading for Writers."

Reading Your Own Work Critically

Besides reading widely of other poet's work, a new poet needs to learn how to read their own writing. This is essential. Part of this skill involves learning to detach yourself from your writing enough that you can look at it critically. You need to be able to see where the flaws are (without going too far and seeing everything as a flaw and thinking you are no good).

Inspiration and the Need to Revise

I have heard many young poets say that they never revise because they feel the original draft captured their feelings in the rawest, strongest form, and that's what poetry is about, right? In a way, yes. Poetry can be about capturing feelings or images, but there is more to it. One problem with many first drafts is that they only make sense to the poet. That's all very fine if you only ever intend to write for yourself. But what is writing for, if not to communicate? Most art, no matter how the artist may claim it for its own sake, is about communicating -- communicating a feeling like anger, frustration or delight, or communicating an experience, or a vision, or what have you. Why write it down if it's only for you? In order to share, then, a poet has to write so that other people can understand. And that means you'll have to revise, to work over the poem until it captures the essence of the subject in a way that a readers can somehow participate in.

The need to communicate doesn't mean you have to break down your subject or describe it in intricate detail. In fact, the reader doesn't even have to entirely understand what they are reading, as long as they get an impression or a sense, a feeling of the essence of the indescribable nature of your subject.

This also doesn't mean that inspiration is of no use (though most working writers find they become inspired more readily while they are already working than while they are sitting around waiting to be inspired). Inspiration is a wonderful thing and should be used whenever you've got it, but you also need to learn how to listen to it properly. Consider this: "The young poet is not likely at first to be able to listen to his [or her own] voice with that watchful submissiveness necessary to giving it appropriate form. He is likely, indeed, to either impose the wrong form, or to be too slapdash" (from Robin Skelton, The Practice of Poetry). Don't be too hasty when inspiration comes on, but pause and listen to the words. Don't immediately decide a poem is going to be a sonnet because the first line is in iambic pentameter -- it may surprise you, and trying to cram it into a sonnet may very well ruin the work. Be patient with your Muse (the poetic personification of inspiration) and listen to what she has to say before you begin madly scribbling. For more on Muses and the role of inspiration in writing, see "Practical Musekeeping."

How to Revise

It is difficult to explain exactly how to revise poetry. Revising prose is easier to describe and easier to demonstrate; if nothing else, one can point to grammar and paragraph structure. But poetry is not prose and has a whole different set of problems. Sometimes working on the grammar in poetry is worthwhile -- like any other kind of writing, you need to know the rules and be able to apply them before you can bend or break them in any useful way.

Revising poetry is more about getting the sound right (which can include grammar, as really bad grammar will jar the ear, too). Part 5 describes some of the ways the analysis of rhythmic structure can help a poet to work out problems in metered verse. And you need to read your work aloud. Anywhere you stumble in reading, anywhere you think "that doesn't quite sound right," anywhere the wording is awkward, are places that need working over. Once you've got a hard copy of your original draft, you can't destroy it by making changes on a fresh piece of paper, so experiment. Try wording lines in different ways, try moving lines around, go through a thesaurus for more interesting words.

For an example of how one would-be poet (me) works on a poem, see Revising Poetry: An Example. It is also well worth tracking down a copy of Robin Skelton's book The Practice of Poetry for the worksheets in Chapter Six, showing how Thomas Kinsella revised his poem "Mirror in February."

All this detail on form and rhythm and diction may seem to you to complicate the process of poetry unnecessarily, but isn't it worth pursuing anything that will make you a better writer? As Robin Skelton says in The Practice of Poetry,

There us, finally, no route to poetry save through deliberate practice of the craft, and while such practice may prove tedious and laborious, it leads at last to an easy control of language and form which gives one the freedom to follow the compulsions of one's imagination without being hindered and obstructed by technical clumsiness.

Practice leads to control which leads to freedom. Try it. Work hard and free your poetry. Good luck!