Write a Poem that Doesn’t Suck
Step one: Be concise
As an English professor and a published poet, I know that poetry writing is a complex topic. However, we’ll start with this: a good poem needs to be concise, specific, and concrete. Today, we’ll discuss conciseness.
Conciseness
In short, poetry is boiled down prose.
Imagine you have a short story about how your fiancé cheated on you and dumped you. You outline the situation for everyone; you pour in all your feelings. Then you sit back, read it, and realize that it would have much more impact as a poem.
So you take your ten pages of short story, drop it into a caldron, add a few pinches of alliteration and assonance, and toss in a few sprigs of rhythm. Then you let it simmer for three hours until all the excess is boiled out.
Now you have a poem.
To write a poem is to cut out everything extra. Get out a pair of pruning shears and cut and cut until the language is as tight as it can be.
Consider the following poem by Margret Atwood:
You fit into me
like a hook into an eye
a fish hook
an open eye
Okay, so we have four lines and 16 words. However, we also have the point. Atwood doesn’t…
