Ways to improve your poetry. Post your techniques, tips, and creative ideas how to write better.
6/30/2016 2:24:01 AM
David Smith
Posts: 13
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There are many reasons why I write poetry and each poem may have been written for a different reason.
Feelings play a big part in my writing. When I first started writing it was to impress a lady. So looked for words that would best suit that purpose and my feelings towards her.
Poems like "on stage" (posted) were to celebrate a special time and place and to acknowledge that to the people involved. For some of my poetry the message takes centre stage. Some is more like doodling. Some is for fun. Some is to experiment and fit a particular category. It is all for me part of growing and understanding. I have written some poetry as a record of feelings and motivations. Some poems are to release pressure and keep my sanity. I am now in the refinement stage and poetry soup is helping. Some poems are to reach out and connect with others. Asking questions of myself has helped maybe it could help you too.
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10/23/2017 4:44:19 AM
Alyssa Tallent
Posts: 11
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I am writing for people I love)
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10/27/2017 3:29:59 AM
Elizabeth Wilkin
Posts: 2
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I write to get the emotions I feel onto "paper". I feel so much, and so deeply it needs a place to go.
edited by Elizabeth Wilkin on 10/27/2017
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11/16/2017 4:17:12 PM
Bob Atkinson
Posts: 294
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Why write Poetry?
My feeling is you are communicating your emotions to those not yet born. You are adding to the quality of recorded history. Prose attempts to describe perceived reality. Poetry attempts to document your reaction to perceived reality. Simple as that. Any other reason would be subordinate to this. This is the only reason that makes poetry valuable.
For personal reasons only? Then write it and stick it in a desk drawer or the waste basket,
nobody cares.
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11/28/2017 11:14:02 AM
Stephen Wilson-Floyd
Posts: 49
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Rather than put down what I think is maudlin poetry, I have come to realize people write for different audiences. Some is written for self-discovery, some friends and family, some for members of the writer's church, synagogue or temple. I have come to find out a lot about myself from writing. I never believed in what is called a "writer's voice" until I developed one. I've written a lot of pretentious poems and discarded them all. I like to think, I've become a less phony person because of it. The speaker who speaks in my poems, is not too bad a person after all. Archibald McLeash considered writing his poems as a kind of religion in itself. What I understand about this, I agree.
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4/1/2018 9:08:41 PM
Tim Peterson
Posts: 1
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It is therapeutic. Observation, description, and appreciation without judgement.
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1/31/2019 6:24:50 PM
J P Marmaro
Posts: 9
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The urge to write poetry is often claimed to be that of self-expression. And truth to tell, this is indeed an important part of it. But if it is the only reason, it can degenerate into sheer narcissism. So much purported poetry is nothing more than self-indulgence. There is also the notion that poetry can be "anything" one deems it to be, which might account for the depressingly and overwhelmingly large proportion of it being mostly doggerel. Rules do matter, both of grammar and form. Take for example, the pandemic of stilted diction. "Poetic license" doesn't justify twisting word-order to improve scansion-- and using false (or non-) rhymes in place of actual rhymes is simply laziness. Both practices are of disappointing frequency, even ubiquity.
The assertion that poetry is self-expression is, on analysis, meaningless: all language could be said to be self-expression. And if one is merely concerned with expressing oneself, straightforward prose is simpler, more direct, and more efficient. But then, I believe poetry is much more than simple self-expression. The essence of poetry is twofold: what one wishes to say, and how one says it.
The "what one wishes to say" part? If one is going to the trouble of crafting poetry, then what one wishes to say should be something, in one way or another, out of the ordinary. Either the ideas or subject themselves ought be in some way special, or it might be that something quite quotidian is approached in an unusual or surprising fashion. Lots of people are moved by a lovely sunset or a flower, by love or patriotism, by feelings or impressions. Poetry takes these experiences, crystallizes them, and expresses them in a way which ideally might enable the reader to have that same experience, or impression, or emotion. It can do this with the most abstruse philosophical or metaphysical rumination, or to the other end of the spectrum, the most basic, childlike, or naïve reaction. The point is to take this experience, or realization, or epiphany, and couch it in language that makes it possible for others to share.
Which brings us to the second half of the equation, how one expresses it. The point is that poetic language is not everyday language, though it should not do violence to the rules of grammar and diction. One may employ a wider and richer vocabulary than ordinary speech, and one should strive to find the most apt words and images to convey thought. Indeed, I view poetry as a kind of intellectual, verbal athletics, exercising one's command of the language rather like calisthenics. Part of this is being able to mold one's expression into the various poetic forms, which by their nature influence what is being said; and the stricter the forms, the more challenging it is to utilize them. (Free verse may be "free", but it seems to require even more unusual observations -- what one says needs to be that much more special and apposite than ordinary speech, more surprising or memorable -- otherwise, where's the poetry in it?) And in all poetry, one needs to have a feel for the sensual aspect of the language, the very sounds of the words: it should be beautiful, or tragic, or humorous, euphonic or jarring or startling, but in any case, it needs to be compelling in a way ordinary speech rarely is. If one might be permitted to draw an analogy with the visual arts, words, rhythms, rhymes, sentences and structures are to a poet as medium, colors, brushes, canvas, and composition are to a painter.
Why then is one moved to write poetry? In my case, it is an urge to share a thought or realization, to transmit an idea or observation in a way at once unusual but also accessible. There is of course a confessional element to it, but perhaps the most significant motivation is the sheer will to create.
edited by jpmarmaro on 1/31/2019
edited by jpmarmaro on 1/31/2019
edited by jpmarmaro on 2/9/2019
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3/6/2019 5:16:00 AM
Kevin Fairbrother
Posts: 4
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I see my poetry, as an expression of thoughts and feelings, of the surrounding natural world, I then put it into words with not to much editing, as I find this takes away the originality of what my thoughts or feelings were at the time.
I write to entertain and challenge myself, if it turns out ok then I might post it somewhere.
Having just come back to PS, I feel it hasn't changed a great deal, lots of lookers but not many comments for poems submitted.
There should be a golden rule for Soupers that if I read one of your poems and comment, then you should return the favour.
Have a good day.
Cheers.
Kev
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5/17/2019 11:14:10 AM
Mark Owens
Posts: 1
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I think it's a personal inner desire to write something.
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7/13/2019 8:04:41 PM
Devotchka Lovingrace
Posts: 5
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I write about things I don't fully understand or that at a surface level make me anxious. For instance, the human body as a machine or aging.
Also the world around me and things that annoy me. For instance, in the UK we had this image of the Soviet bloc as some grey void where everything lacks character. A bland despair. However, most UK cities are exactly that and they're harrowing.
So in summary I suppose I write because I want to muse over things or point them out- however, in true Brit style I want to talk about things without talking about things so I end up self-censoring with metaphors and analogies...the result is a drunken and confused poetry.
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7/20/2019 4:48:54 PM
cancerkid
Posts: 1
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It's a strange thing this poetry thing. To be frank, very few ever get to be poets. The learning process takes time. It takes honesty and it takes a special understanding of words, simile, metaphor, and imagery. Linear thinking does not work, except in the case of prose-poetry, yet even here there must be an off-center view of reality, otherwise it is simply reporting and narrative.
There are rules in poetry, but if a poet sticks slavishly to them, she or he may end up stifling their own imagination. All poetry is contemporary. The poetry of the past is contemporary now because it is good poetry, not because it followed the rules, forms and manners of its time.
Yesterday's writing literary conditions can be convincingly mimicked by current writers, but
mimicry can hardly ever be an honest way of conceptual thinking in the present time.
My personal opinion is that a post-modern poet has to be wired up in a certain way. The poet has to be at ease with a reality that is often Meta and imaginatively on step away from the known.
If a writer writes only of the known (that is to say, the common thought), then he or she is reporting and replicating. No new ground is being explored.
Again, to be brutal, I have to say that most aspiring poets do not progress from the maudlin,
and the many self-centered expression of immaturity we find in the majority of cases.
Poetry as 'self-expression' is not the whole story. Poetry as an emotional outlet is a dead end.
In fact emotional poetry is doomed to be ultimately vacuous. Emotion must be left mostly to the reader, not the poet. Self Expression is a ridiculous path to follow, unless we know how to express our art in such a way, that it does not scream of self-indulgence. The trope 'self-expression' has led many to think that anything goes. Yes, anything can 'go' but it goes nowhere
if it is only a commonly trod theme.
Now I should confess that I have, and occasionally am guilty of most of the above, but I think I have crossed over a line, a line that is so very difficult for me to define, where I can now practice self-awareness and self-analysis. When we can get across that line, we are in a position to
perhaps help others who show talent and skill (one is no good without the other), and that is the purpose of this post. Again I am, as a poet a work in progress,, thank God!
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9/9/2023 5:38:27 PM
Lacey Perry
Posts: 2
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I like this thread
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10/27/2023 7:09:04 AM
tom pickering
Posts: 6
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My prose is less well defined and precise than I would like. Poetry is the art of carefully chosen words. By working on my poems I hope to develop better overall writing skills and, for the moment, writing is how I earn my living.
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