Everything You Need to Know About Like Poem

Jerz > Writing > General Artistic Writing Tips [ Poetry | Fiction ]

If y'all are writing a poem because y'all want to capture a feeling that you experienced, then y'all don't need these tips. Only write whatever feels right. Just y'all experienced the feeling that you want to express, and so only you will know whether your verse form succeeds.

If, however, your goal is to communicate with a reader — drawing on the established conventions of a literary genre (conventions that will be familiar to the experienced reader) to generate an emotional response in your reader — then simply writing what feels right to yous won't be enough.  (Encounter also "Poetry is for the Ear" and "When Backwards Newbie Poets Write.")

These tips volition help you brand an important transition:

• abroad from writing poetry to celebrate, commemorate, or capture your own feelings (in which case y'all, the poet, are the center of the poem's universe)
• towards writing poesy in order to generate feelings in your reader (in which example the poem exists entirely to serve the reader).

1. Know Your Goal
2. Avoid Clichés
3. Avert Sentimentality
4. Utilise Images
5. Use Metaphor and Simile
6. Use Physical Words Instead of Abstract Words
7. Communicate Theme
8. Subvert the Ordinary
9. Rhyme with Extreme Caution
10. Revise, Revise, Revise

Tip #1 Know Your Goal.

If you don't know where you're going, how can you go there?

You need to know what you are trying to accomplish earlier you begin any project. Writing a verse form is no exception.

Before you begin, ask yourself what yous want your poem to "do." Practise you want your poem to explore a personal feel, protest a social injustice, describe the beauty of nature, or play with language in a certain style? In one case your know the goal of your verse form, you can conform your writing to that goal. Take each chief element in your poem and make it serve the principal purpose of the poem.

Tip #two Avoid Clichés

Stephen Minot defines acliché as: "A metaphor or simile that has become so familiar from overuse that the vehicle … no longer contributes whatever pregnant whatsoever to the tenor. It provides neither the vividness of a fresh metaphor nor the forcefulness of a unmarried unmodified word….The discussion is also used to describe overused but nonmetaphorical expressions such equally 'tried and true' and 'each and every'" (Three Genres: The Writing of Poetry, Fiction and Drama, 405).

Cliché besides describes other overused literary elements. "Familiar plot patterns and stock characters are clichés on a big scale" (Minot 148). Clichés tin exist overused themes, grapheme types, or plots. For instance, the "Lone Ranger" cowboy is a platitude because it has been used then many times that people no longer observe it original.

A work full of clichés is similar a plate of old food: unappetizing.

More than creative writing tips.

Clichés work against original communication. People value artistic talent. They want to see work that rises to a higher place the norm. When they see a work without clichés, they know the author has worked his or her tail off, doing whatever it takes to be original. When they see a work total to the brim with clichés, they feel that the writer is not showing them annihilation above the ordinary. (In example you hadn't noticed, this paragraph is brimming full of clichés… I'll bet you were bored to tears.)

Clichés dull meaning. Because clichéd writing sounds then familiar, people can finish whole lines without fifty-fifty reading them. If they don't bother to read your verse form, they certainly won't stop to think about it. If they do not cease to think well-nigh your poem, they will never encounter the deeper meanings that marker the work of an accomplished poet.

Examples of Clichés:

busy as a bee tired as a dog working my fingers to bone beet red

on the horns of a dilemma blind every bit a bat eats like a horse eats like a bird

How to Improve a Cliché

I volition take the cliché "as busy as a bee" and show how you can express the same idea without cliché.

1. Determine what the clichéd phrase is trying to say.
   In this case, I can see that "decorated as a bee" is a way to draw the land of beingness busy.
2. Think of an original fashion to describe what the cliché is trying to describe.
   For this cliché, I started by thinking virtually busyness. I asked myself the question, "What things are associated with being busy?" I came up with: college, my friend Jessica, corporation bosses, one-time ladies making quilts and canning goods, and a computer, fiddlers piddling. From this listing, I selected a thing that is not as oftentimes used in association with busyness: violins.
3. Create a phrase using the non-clichéd mode of clarification.
   I took my object associated with busyness and turned it into a phrase: "I feel similar a bow fiddling an Irish reel." This phrase communicates the idea of "busyness" much better than the worn-out, familiar cliché. The reader's mind can movie the insane fury of the bow on the violin, and know that the poet is talking about a very frenzied sort of busyness. In fact, those readers who know what an Irish reel sounds similar may even become a laugh out of this fresh way to draw "busyness."

Try it! Take a cliche and use these steps to better it. Y'all may even end up with a line you feel is good enough to put in a poem!

Tip #3 Avoid Sentimentality.

Sentimentality is "dominated by a blunt appeal to the emotions of compassion and love …. Popular subjects are puppies, grandparents, and young lovers" (Minot 416). "When readers have the feeling that emotions like rage or indignation have been pushed artificially for their own sake, they will not take the verse form seriously" (132).

Minot says that the trouble with sentimentality is that information technology detracts from the literary quality of your work (416). If your poetry is mushy or teary-eyed, your readers may openly rebel confronting your endeavour to invoke emotional response in them. If that happens, they will finish thinking near the issues you want to raise, and will instead spend their free energy trying to control their own gag reflex.

Tip #four Apply Images.

"BE A PAINTER IN WORDS," says UWEC English professor emerita, poet, and songwriter Peg Lauber. She says poetry should stimulate six senses:

• sight
• hearing
• smell
• impact
• sense of taste
• kinesiology (move)

Examples.

• "Sunlight varnishes magnolia branches crimson" (sight)
• "Vacuum cleaner's whir and hum startles my ferret" (hearing)
• "Penguins lumber to their nests" (kinesiology)

Lauber advises her students to produce fresh, striking images ("imaginative"). Be a camera.Make the readerbe in that location with the poet/speaker/narrator. (See also: "Show, Don't (Just) Tell")

Tip #5 Employ Metaphor and Simile.

Use metaphor and simile to bring imagery and physical words into your writing.

Metaphor

A metaphor is a statement that pretends one matter is actually something else:

Example: "The lead vocalist is an elusive salamander."

This phrase does not mean that the lead singer is literally a salamander. Rather, it takes an abstract characteristic of a salamander (elusiveness) and projects information technology onto the person. By using metaphor to describe the atomic number 82 singer, the poet creates a much more vivid film of him/her than if the poet had simply said "The lead vocalist's vocalisation is hard to pick out."

Simile

A simile is a argument where you say ane object is similar to some other object. Similes use the words "like" or "as."

Case: "He was curious as a caterpillar" or "He was curious, similar a caterpillar"

This phrase takes one quality of a caterpillar and projects information technology onto a person. It is an like shooting fish in a barrel way to attach concrete images to feelings and character traits that might usually exist described with abstruse words.

Annotation: A simile is not automatically whatever more or less "poetic" than a metaphor. You don't of a sudden produce improve poems if you replace all your similes with metaphors, or vice versa. The indicate to remember is that comparison, inference, and proposition are all of import tools of poetry; similes and metaphors are tools that will help in those areas.

Tip #6 Apply Concrete Words Instead of Abstruse Words.

Physical words describe things that people experience with their senses.

• orange
• warm
• cat

A person can see orangish, feel warm, or hear a cat.

A poet's concrete words assist the reader get a "picture show" of what the verse form is talking about. When the reader has a "picture" of what the verse form is talking almost, he/she tin improve understand what the poet is talking about.

Abstract words refer to concepts or feelings.

• freedom
• happy
• dear

"Freedom" is a concept, "happy" is a feeling, and no one tin can agree on whether "love" is a feeling, a concept or an activity.

A person can't see, touch, or taste any of these things. Equally a upshot, when used in poetry, these words might simply wing over the reader's head, without triggering any sensory response. Farther, "liberty," "happy," and "love" can mean dissimilar things to different people. Therefore, if the poet uses such a word, the reader may take a different meaning from it than the poet intended.

Change Abstract Words Into Concrete Words

To avoid problems caused by using abstract words, employ physical words.

Example: "She felt happy."

This line uses the abstract word "happy." To improve this line, change the abstract word to a concrete paradigm. One way to reach this is to call up of an object or a scene that evokes feelings of happiness to represent the happy feeling.

Improvement: "Her smile spread like reddish tint on ripening tomatoes."

This line uses two physical images: a smile and a ripening tomato. Describing the smile shows the reader something about happiness, rather than simply coming correct out and naming the emotion. Also, the symbolism of the tomato further reinforces the happy feelings. Red is oft associated with love; ripening is a positive natrual process; food is farther associated with beingness satisfied.

Prof. Jerz belabors Kara's signal:

Extension: Now, let's do something with this image.

She sulked in the garden, reticent...hard; Unwilling to face his kisses -- or unable. Ane autumn morn she felt her sour face Ripen to a helpless smile, love apple-ruby. Her parted lips whispered, "Hello, sunshine!"

OK, the image has gotten embarrassingly obvious now, simply you lot can see how the introduction of the tomato plant permits united states to make many additional connections. While Kara'south original case simply reported a static emotional state — "She felt happy," the image of the ripening tomato, which Kara introduced every bit a simple simile to describe a grinning, has grown into something much more circuitous. Regardless of what the word "tomato plant" invoked inyour heed, an abstraction similar "happy" tin can never stretch itself out to become a whole poem, without relying on concrete images. –DGJ

Tip #seven Communicate Theme.

Verse always has a theme. Theme is not just a topic, simply an idea with an opinion.

Theme = Idea + Stance

Topic: "The Vietnam State of war"

This is not a theme. Information technology is only a discipline. It is just an issue. There are no ideas, opinions, or statements almost life or of wisdom contained in this judgement

Theme: "History shows that despite our claims to be peace-loving, unfortunately each person secretly dreams of gaining glory through conflict."

This is a theme. Information technology is not just an event, just a statement about an consequence. It shows what the poetthinks about the outcome. The poet strives to bear witness the reader his/her theme during the entire verse form, making use of literary techniques.

Tip #8 Subvert the Ordinary.

Poets' strength is thepower to run into what other people see everyday in a new way. You don't have to be special or a literary genius to write good poems–all y'all take to do is take an ordinary object, identify, person, or idea, and come with a new perception of information technology.

Example: People ride the bus everyday.

Poets' Interpretation: A poet looks at the people on the charabanc and imagines scenes from their lives. A poet sees a sixty-year old woman and imagines a grandmother who runs marathons. A poet sees a two-year former boy and imagines him painting with ruby nail shine on the toilet seat, and his mother struggling to not reply in anger.

Take the ordinary and plough it on its head. (The discussion "subvert" literally means "turn upside downwards".)

Tip #9 Rhyme with Extreme Caution.

Rhyme and meter (the pattern of stressed and unstressed words) can exist dangerous if used the wrong fashion. Remember sing-song plant nursery rhymes? If you choose a rhyme scheme that makes your poem sound sing-song, it will detract from the quality of your verse form.

I recommend thatstart poets stick to complimentary poesy. It is hard enough to compose a poem without dealing with the intricacies of rhyme and meter. (Note: see Jerz'south response to this point, in "Poetry Is For the Ear.")

If you lot feel ready to create a rhymed poem, refer to chapters 6-10 of Stephen Minot's volumeIii Genres: The Writing of Poesy, Fiction, and Drama. half dozen^th ed., for more than help.

Tip #10 Revise, Revise, Revise.

The first completed draft of your poem is simply the kickoff. Poets oft go through several drafts of a poem earlier because the work "done."

To revise:

• Put your poem away for a few days, and then come up back to it. When you re-read it, does anything seem confusing? Difficult to follow? Do you see anything that needs improvement that you overlooked the starting time time? Often, when you are in the act of writing, you may leave out important details because you are so familiar with the topic. Re-reading a poem helps you to meet it from the "outsider's perspective" of a reader.
• Show your verse form to others and ask for criticism. Don't exist content with a response like, "That's a nice poem." Yous won't acquire anything from that kind of response. Instead, find people who will tell y'all specific things y'all need to improve in your poem.

---

26 May 2000 — originally submitted by Kara Ziehl, as an assignment for Prof. Jerz'due south technical writing grade
01 Aug 2000 — modified and posted by Jerz
xxx Nov 2001 — minor edits by Jerz
21 July 2011 — pocket-size refresh
22 May 2013 — added intro earlier the tips.
24 Dec 2017 — pocket-size formatting tweaks
09 Apr 2019 — corrected a chiliad-year error caused by a typo in the to a higher place line

See Also:

Handouts > Creative Writing > Poetry Tips

Verse is for the Ear —Any poetry you lot write or read, larn to listen with the ears of your audience. Pay attention to the sounds the words make, fifty-fifty if you write in free poetry.

---

About This Page

Kara Ziehl, a UWEC creative writing major, compiled these tips in order to help students in my English 110 ("Introduction to Higher Writing") class. I have fine-tuned and expanded her text somewhat, but I recollect she did an excellent task — this is now required reading for budding pupil poets in my classes. –DGJ

randallintiest.blogspot.com

Source: https://jerz.setonhill.edu/writing/creative1/poetry-writing-tips-how-to-write-a-poem/

Share this post