How to Write a Poem

Says Wiki-How, "Think about what you want to achieve with your poem."

Many people outline short stories, novels, and screenplays. You can also write outlines for poetry, unless you're writing short lyrical poems, but even these you can write informal outlines.

What do you want to achieve? What is the subject of your poetry? What is its theme? These are questions you can ask yourself in a poet's questionnaire. You can also jot down central images and metaphors. Correct them it they are trite and cliche. Be original in your use of imagery and metaphors. Don't overuse imagery and metaphors used often in other poetry.

Writing about love? Don't be trite. Don't be cliche? Don't be sentimental. How is your poem about love different from other poetry about love? There might be similarities. But how to you make these similarities different? What is your conception of love? How do you express that conception in poetry?

Here Are Things You Can Think About:

If you're writing a narrative poem about love similar to the narrative poetry of Robert Frost or Robinson Jeffers or Geoffrey Chaucer or other poets who have included narratives in their repertoire, then you can certainly outline poetry that has a storyline. Again, how is this story different from other narrative poems about love? You can make an outline similar to storytelling outlines. Except this is poetry and the rhythms of poetry are going to be different from those of prose? How do you make this poetry different from prose?

Again, says Wiki-How, "Writing a poem is all about observing the world within you or around you." This is important for a creative person, whether you're a poet, musician, or artist, or even a creative business professional. Observing the world to write a poem is not just observing the world around you, but the world within yourself.

Again, our love poem. What does the world around you say about love? Then what of the world within yourself? To make your poem about love archetypal but different, you must know about the conceptions of love in the world around you. But how do you yourself conceptualize love? What images? What metaphors? What storylines? What characters - for poems like stories can have central characters, principle and minor. Jot down words and phrases that help you to conceptualize your poem.

For further suggestions from Wiki-How, including "reading and listening to poetry," the relationship between poetic style (including genre or poetic form, like haiku or sonnet or free verse) and subject, listening to your own poem (note section on poetry as an oral art form), use of poetic devices, e.g. "rhyme... meter, metaphor, assonance, alliteration, and repetition," selecting the right vocabulary, use of concrete and vivid images and descriptions, use of concrete and vivid events, (that is the "objective correlative") selecting an audience for your poem, editing ("Don't edit as you write. Or maybe edit as you write."), and getting the opinions of others, go to wikihow.com.

Make use of these suggestions that work for you to help you achieve your most effective poetry. These suggestions are especially helpful when revising poetry, whether lyrical or dramatic.

Now, in your poetry notebook, write down your own advice on how to write a poem.

Other Things To Do:

• Keep a library of books on writing poetry.
• Keep a poetry journal or a poetry notebook to jot down titles for poems, ideas, concepts, words and phrases, metaphors and images, poetic storylines.
• Use other genres to inspire you to poetry - music, paintings, photographs.

Recommended Books on How to Write Poetry (available from Amazon.com):

1. How to Write Poetry Scholastic Guides
2. The Complete Idiot's Guide to Writing Poetry
3. You Can Write Poetry (You Can Write)
4. How to Write Poetry: And Get It Published
5. How to Write Poetry (Third Edition)
6. A Writer's Notebook - How to Write Poetry
7. Como Leer Y Escribir Poesia/How to Read and Write Poetry
8. Como Se Escribe Polynesians/How to Write Poetry
9. How to Read and Write Poetry: A First Book
10. How to write and publish poetry: An apprentice's helper

These are just a few of the recommended books on writing poetry. Many others including The Poet's Handbook are also available from Amazon.com and/or your local bookseller. The reading level of How to Read and Write Poetry: A First Book is written for babies and preschoolers. So if you want to introduce preschoolers to poetry reading and writing, this is your (or rather their) book.