Writing Poetry

Everything You Need to Know about Poetry

Robert Frost: "no tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader."

Poetry wants to charm, fascinate, compel attention. It offers a fresh path through long-known places, a way of going that's odd, new.

A poem will usually have a subject, make a "point" (even several) --but what lifts it into language-specialness is tactics, an appealing method of drawing us in --seduction, absolutely!--a fetching manner of "coming on."

Frost again: If it is a wild tune, it is a poem."
And: "We enjoy the straight crookedness of a good walking stick."

Wild tune. Straight crookedness. Contradictory supports. Wildness tends toward chaos, the danger of incomprehensibility, untamed eccentricity, astounding but baffling crookedness. . . hence the need for tune, which is a principle of order, of sanity, straightness. If it's just a tune, if it's only straight-to-the-point. . .no tears, laughter, revelation, freshening, surprise.  If it's only a wildness, we're lost, pathless. We need both: intent, cause-effect, sequence, "point," -- as well as the unexpectedness that marks living language with the unduplicatable flavor of one writer's personality, thought, speech patterns, style, values, concerns.

Poetry Writing Links

This Poetry: A Practical Guide to Writing Poetry  http://www.thispoetry.com/
John Hewitt's Poetry Writing Tips: http://www.poewar.com/articles/poetrytips.htm