by John Oughton
There's a secret about writing poetry well. When you write a poem
down the first time, that's about half the job. The other half is
reading it over and making it better.
This part of the job includes finding stronger words and lines,
cutting out repetition, awkward and dull parts, and overcoming the
usual English problems in spelling, punctuation and grammar. Without
inspiration and emotion, no poem is ever going to be very good.
But you can have inspiration and emotion, and still produce a not
very good poem -- if you don't edit and revise it well after the
first draft.
One of the best ways to prepare for editing your own poetry is
to read other people's poetry. Carefully. Read a lot of other poems,
in different styles and about different subjects. Look for effects,
techniques, shortcuts you can borrow (of course, don't steal their
actual lines!). Pick a poem you really admire, and put one of your
poems beside it. How -- without just stealing or copying -- can
you make your poem work more like your fave?
Of course, it's a big help to have someone else, preferably who
knows poetry well, also read your work and make suggestions. That's
why poetry workshops, courses and classes can be useful. But ideal
readers aren't always around -- and to improve as a writer, you
have to learn to do this work yourself.
Here are some tips and common problems to watch out for when you're
working on your poem.
1. As with any writing, it helps to put it aside for a while,
and then come back to it. Pretend someone else wrote it; then you
can read it more objectively than when you've just written it, and
are still in love with it.
2. Read it out loud, and listen carefully. Are there lines that
you stumble over? Parts that have awkward sounds or tongue-twister
combinations? Lines where you run out of breath before they're over?
Those are places you need to work on.
3. Look at the line endings, or as poets call them "line breaks."
There are two ways to end a line in poetry: a) enjambed, where the
line flows smoothly into the next one with little pause, or b) end-stopped,
when the reader will pause before going onto the next line. Use
enjambment when you are building up a scene, description, feeling
and want the reader to rush onto the next line; end-stops when you
want to slow down the reader to emphasize a word or image, complete
a sequence, or create a more fragmented, scattered feeling. End-stopped
lines end on a strong word (a noun or verb) or use appropriate punctuation
like a period, colon, or dash.
4. Beware of overusing prepositions (those short words that show
ownership, direction, position, etc, in English). A long series
of phrases that start with prepositions is slow, awkward and eventually
boring to read. There are ways to get around too many prepositions
in a line, by changing some words to show possession with apostrophes,
eliminating "of", etc. As an example, one might edit "There is a
tree in the valley below the hill to the west" to the improved "The
valley's tree below the western hill..." Articles -- a, an, the
-- often are dead weight in poems too. Try to do without them unless
you really need one.
5. Watch out for antique "lawn sale" language (outmoded words
and references no longer used in today's speech). Because many young
poets read work by earlier writers like Poe and Shakespeare (who
were writing using the language of their own times), they think
poems today should be written the same way. But it's better to write
using the words and patterns that you talk with -- that way it sounds
like you, not recycled 19th or 16th century writing. If you write
poems with lines like "Lo, how Doth the Wind breathe o'er the Vale,
to catch Fair Hyperion's Eye...", it is time to catch... up with
the 21st century!
6. If you write using regular rhyme and rhythms, there are some
technical things to work on. Make sure that your rhymes are original
and a bit unexpected. Don't use the most obvious rhymes as these
bore readers quickly. Don't make a line awkward or "forced" just
for the sake of getting a rhyme word at the end. Find a better rhyme,
or revise the lines until they flow more naturally. If you are writing
in a meter (regular rhythm), make sure that your lines fit the pattern
except when you want a change to stress a point or moment.
7. Don't over-explain your points or ideas. Say them once, but
as clearly and strongly as you can. Every word in a poem should
count; imagine you have to pay for each one, and don't waste your
money (or the reader's time!) Related to this is how to write about
feelings. In poetry, it works better to let the images and sound
of the poem convey your feelings than just to state baldly how you
feel. "I feel so depressed I just want to crawl into my bed and
hide for a thousand years" may be true, but it's hardly good poetry.
Instead, find a way to write that evokes that feeling in the reader
without being so obvious. The magic of poetry is in creating feelings
in the reader by how you write -- not just telling us how you feel.
That's what the phone is for!
8. Is your title original? Interesting? Does it draw the reader
in and make him/her want to read more? Often a line or image from
your poem makes a better title than an obvious "explanation" like
"How I Felt After Our First Date" or "About the Tragedy on TV."
Sometimes the title can also work as the first line of the poem,
as in:
THE SHARK CAME CLOSER
And I shuddered, lost in deep blue...
9. Watch out for cliches: standard ways of saying things, overused
images. Poems should make things and ideas new. If you've heard
a combination of words before, don't use it in your poem unless
you're commenting on it or making fun of it, etc. For example, few
modern poems can get away with "white as snow" "dark as night,"
"fierce like a lion," "cold as ice," or "beautiful as a rose." BORRRRING!
Use your imagination and come up with something we haven't heard
before.
10. Ending and beginnings are critical. Don't start with a dull,
prose-like series of details or a long description of a place. Instead,
try to "jump" your reader into the middle of something interesting
or mysterious and fill in the details later. Don't end by telling
the reader what all the rest of the poem means. A little mystery
or surprise is more effective.
11. Beware of the kind of wandering, abstract lines that give
readers the "lost in space" feeling. Poems that read something like:
Fear soars in the dark abyss while harsh clouds mumble far away and inspiration leaps the void...
where is this happening? Who is "in" the poem? Is it now or a
thousand years ago? Most readers prefer poetry that has some grounding
in the real world. It helps to use names of actual places, trees,
flowers, streets, even products in your poems, and to write using
the language you speak every day. You don't actually ever see just
"a tree": you see a birch, a scarlet maple, an oak, a jack pine,
etc. and each one has a slightly diffrerent feeling and value. The
same is true of birds, bugs, flowers, vehicles, and so on. It's
best to be specific -- but without getting too bogged down in details.
12. How do you know when you're done? Many writers feel they're
never completely done with a poem, and some even revise them years
after they're published. Best advice -- try to revise enough to
remove obvious mistakes, dull patches, cluttered lines, etc. but
not so much that the poem's lost all its freshness or originality.
You're not trying to make it sound like "everyone else" but rather
sound like "you" as best you can. Make it unique, not no-name.
14. Don't be afraid to cut. Poems often gain energy by
losing unnecessary bits; think of making a soup. You start
out with a lot of ingredients and then boil them down until
all the flavours work together and the soup has a strong
taste. If part of a poem seems to veer off from the feeling
or direction of the rest, take it out. You can always fit
it into a different poem. Remember, it's better to have
written a great four-line poem than a rambling, wordy,
400-line mess. Ezra Pound, the American poet, wrote about
taking a longish poem he'd written after watching people on
the Paris subway and realizing the only words worth keeping
were:
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
Also, try moving the stanzas around. Sometimes the third
stanza in a poem actually makes a better beginning or ending
than the one originally put there.
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