How To Not Write a Poem
The following is a list of the mistakes immature poets often make. The truth is, even practiced poets will make these mistakes. Nobody is immune to lazy writing. But if you want your reader to realize that you are not a talented poet, that you have nothing new or interesting to say, then be sure to include one or more of the following things in your poetry.
1. Use archaic language.
Once upon a time when people spoke, they used such words as "thou" and "methinks." A lot of poetry was written at this time and we are still reading these poems today even though we no longer talk that way. Contemporary poetry should be written in contemporary language. When Shakespeare wrote, "Methinks thou doth protest too much," this is actually how people spoke in his day. When you choose to use archaic language for the sake of sounding poetic, you only make yourself sound like an amateur.
2. Use cliches in your writing.
Cliches are useless unless you are writing about cliches. If you fall back onto cliches you reveal yourself as a lazy writer. If you describe someone’s eyes as being deep as the ocean or your love being like a rose or any of the other typical metaphors, your reader will quickly lose interest.
3. Rhyme for rhyming’s sake.
There are many people who write form poetry which usually means lines of verse that have end rhymes. When done effectively, some of the most brilliant poetry will rhyme and rhyme well. However, too often it is done poorly. If you have to invert sentences to force a line to rhyme, revise the poem until you can do it without compromising your syntax. My son likes to mock certain rappers for making rhymes out of nonsense words or, worse, rhyming the same word with itself. If you can’t rhyme creatively, better to just not rhyme at all.
4. Be vague and abstract.
Henry Miller says that he always set aside his writing for a year. I have done this and been surprised to find a poem I wrote was utterly meaningless to me. It sounded lovely, used typically poetic language with metaphors, allusions to literature. But when I try to get to what the poem means, all I see are pretty phrases with no substance.
5. Stop reading poetry.
If you want to write bad poetry, you either need to expose yourself to only bad poetry. The problem is that if you read any poetry you risk reading good or even great poetry so it is probably best to read no poetry at all. If you simply must read poetry, only read poetry that was written over 500 years ago. You wouldn’t want to read anything contemporary, anything written in your vernacular. Better yet, try to read poetry written by people with whom you have no connection. Most older poetry is written by highly educated, wealthy, white men. If you are none of these, you won’t be able to identify with them as poets and what you write will lack authenticity.
6. Read books about poetry–all of them, all of the time.
Rather than actually write poetry, spend your time reading about writing poetry. Memorize everything you can about meter, be ready to define any and all formal poetry types from haiku to vilanelle, and memorize not only the difference between a Shakespearean sonnet and an Italian sonnet. If you can actually quote from memory examples of all of the above, that is even better. The time you spend learning all of this information could have been spent writing poetry and that is not what we are trying to do here.
7. Throw out all spelling and grammar rules.
Whitman and Dickinson started it and then came cummings, who wouldn’t even capitalize his own name. With modern poetry came a wave of waving goodbye to the conventional rules of spelling and grammar. These genius poets paved the path. No longer were poets confined to conventions. Not only did lines not have to rhyme but now poets didn’t even have to capitalize a proper name or follow the most common grammatical rules. The problem is that these people who most perfectly ignore the rules first mastered them which is why they break them so beautifully. They don’t break the rules for the sake of breaking them, they break them to say something more meaningful than conforming to the rules would have afforded them the opportunity to do.
8. Avoid yourself as a poet.
If you are writing poetry then you are probably comfortable with a certain style of writing. Perhaps you are comfortable with free verse or you may prefer for your poems to have a tight rhythm with carefully chosen end rhymes. Neither choice is better than the other but if you write other styles of poetry then you risk actually growing as a poet. Stretching creatively beyond your personal comfort zone will likely result in your becoming a better poet. I caution you to find your one style and stick to it no matter how boring your poetry writing may seem.
9. Mistake prose for poetry.
This offense occurs most often in haiku where someone writes a seventeen syllable sentence and breaks it into lines of five/seven/five and declares themselves the writer of a haiku.
- I hate you mostly
- when I talk to your wife on
- the phone as she cries.
Technically, this meets the haiku standard for line breaks but offers nothing else. It lacks the emotional subtlety of a true haiku. Any poet who would dare to proclaim this a haiku only shows their ignorance of what a haiku should be.
10. Be afraid to break the rules.
Although you definitely want to break the grammar and spelling rules (as mentioned in rule seven above), you want to be careful to the point of paranoia when doing so. Consider all rules sacred. If you do this then you are more likely to write in a very formal tone, using those archaic words that are no longer a part of your natural vocabulary, and you will do whatever it takes to make that line rhyme the way it should.
If by some chance you are reading this article because you actually want to write a good poem, maybe even aspire to write some great poetry, and wanted to read some rules of things to avoid, then you would do well to follow number ten closely. Even these ten points are not sacrosanct. You can and should have the courage to do whatever you must to make your poem as powerful and potent as you can. If that means using archaic language or a cliche, manipulating a line so that the rhyme works, etc., by all means do it. But only do it if it is truly effective and there is no other way to make your poem relevant.
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Posted in Education, Literacy - Reading and Writing
