POETRY WRITING

Earning Your Poetic License

You may be wondering by now why I have primarily been discussing the formal elements of poetry writing. While I have provided some reasoning for my choices — such as the relationship between the brain and rhythm, and the ear and line lengths — there are certainly other considerations when it comes to the practice of any art, including poetry.

The argument that we should write in iambic pentameter, for example, because it’s traditional expresses a sort of half-truth. In the same way that drawing and painting using point-perspective has a history — and a recent history, at that — the use of any particular form or structure in the poetry of a given language has a history. In English, iambic pentameter was introduced to English poetry by Chaucer. Old English poems were written primarily in alliterative verse. In each case, the style was developed within a given poetic tradition and came to dominate in typically organic ways, because it was able to communicate something within the language being used.

Many mistakenly believe that because we can typically point to this or that poem as being the first to use a given structure, that means that structure was consciously developed by that person. More typically, the final form is a process of different people trying different things, with one person bringing those various elements…