Starting the Poem

 

What subject makes a good poem? Anything and everything, is the usual answer. But that’s not very helpful, and not always true.  

Find something that inspires you?

Yes, if you can, and you should, but you can't depend on inspiration. Most poems are unremitting hard work, where the appetite grows with eating. Here are some homilies on how to write poetry.

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Think of it this way. The blank page is a canvas. Unless you're an abstract painter, you have two struggles on your hands — depicting what you see, and working with your chosen medium. You have to imaginatively re-create your visual impressions through the medium you employ. Re-create is the key word. You cannot show everything, and must therefore select. You cannot simply make a faithful copy — the medium prevents that, even in photography — and you must therefore render the scene through and with the chosen medium. But then comes a difficulty. Once the rendering starts, the painting begins to impose its own rules. Balance, composition, perspective, colour used to denote form, for tonal harmony, expressive power, and a dozen other matters jostle for attention. As the painting progresses these considerations have slowly to be brought together and resolved. And not only does the painting restrict what can be depicted or added, it also changes how you view the scene, and the inner vision that prompted you to paint in the first place. Painting is inescapably an evolving dialogue, between your imaginative conjectures, your visual impressions of the scene, and the opportunities/restrictions that the medium provides.

Poetry is no different. The medium seems less a struggle because we use words without thinking in everyday life, but poetry requires words to be used in special ways. Replacing the rules of painting we have the elements of rhythm, imagery, diction, metre, stanza shaping, and so on. Words and phrases are not casually given, moreover, but have to be worked for, by thinking and observing acutely. What we add alters what's been written so far, and therefore opens up and closes down various opportunities. How we write determines what we say. Soon the original inspiration is overtaken by other considerations, and we must either rescue it, or go with the flow of the new work.

The notes below suggest various ways of starting a poem, but remember that the process is not linear, but reverts continually to earlier stages through selection, combination and re-creation. Develop your own methods of working.

Points to Bear in Mind

1. Poets vary widely in their starting methods. Traditionalists commonly need a haunting line or phrase to get them going. Free-verse writers jot down line fragments that introduce their theme. Very experienced writers may plan the whole poem in outline, rather as the old masters created cartoons. But do what seems natural to you, and don’t throw away the early jottings.

2. Professional writers are magpies, snappers up of trifles. They keep notebooks, cuttings, jottings, selections from authors new to them. Do the same.

3. Poems that move an audience must also be powerfully meaningful to their originators. Start something you really want to express, and keep at it. You will learn more from failures than successes.

4. Successful poems are written from a personality in balance with others, and particularly raw experiences may be best left until they can be considered in reflection.

5. Is your poem really necessary? The commonplace themes of poetry – love, passage of seasons, bereavement – have been tackled so often that only the greatest writers have something fresh to say. Think of your composition as an article to a local magazine. Would people want to read it? Does it address matters that interest them? In a sharp, engaging, informative way?

6. Write as you can, when you can. Inspiration comes to those who help themselves by setting regular hours and targets.

 

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