 Poems have natural elements that stay the same no matter what you do. The words move from left to right and the lines go from top to bottom. Of course you can change this and make any kind of poem you want, one that goes backward, forward, or makes alphabet soup on the page or screen. But, for the most part, the basic elements of a poem stay the same each time you start to create a new work.
Everyone knows that the last word of each line gets special emphasis by the reader, no matter what enjambment you use. Everyone also knows that first lines and last lines enjoy a greater punch just by being there. These are basic elements that every poet learns to use, almost by instinct. But what about other "elemental" elements of a poem? Are there aspects that get less attention than first words and last lines, but are just as powerful? In fact, there are quite a number of these basic elements that you can use to empower your poems. I'm only going to talk about one in this post and that's the downward motion of a poem. Virtually every poem in English moves from the top to bottom and you can (and should) use this natural motion to you advantage. One perfect example of this is the poem I talked about in yesterday's post, Plath's "Black Rook in Rainy Weather." The poem starts with the speaker looking up in a hopeful way, and then, as the lines fall down, the speaker looks inward to doubt and hesitation, sweeping back up (slightly) at the close to find a sprig of hope. Another really short poem that uses the downward motion of a poem well is: "We Real Cool" by Gwendolyn Brooks, with the lines literally burying the guys in the poem and leaving a tombstone to them. Another great example is "Apple Picking" by Robert Frost -- where the poem becomes a ladder to memory and dreams. And yet another , rather spectacular, example is Hart Crane's "Atlantis." That one's dynamiter though so be very careful! And last, but certainly not least, I'd like to mention Anne Sexton's poem, "The Ambition Bird" which is about the struggle to contain and release artistic ambition. You can see how she uses the downward climb of the poem yourself -- it's heart wrenching. The point is: the downward climb of a poem is there whether you like it or not; it's part of your poem's expression whether you want it or not. So your best bet is to let the natural gravity of a poem, it's innate fall from imagination to "paper" be your inspiration and your guide. Meanwhile, if you'd like some help with editing or polishing your poems, or you just want some feedback for them, reach out to me @ pitchblackpoet@yahoo.com writerdan@mail.com or use one of the buttons below. Also, check out my 7 Secrets of Poetry guide available now!
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 Each time you write, submit, or publish a poem, you risk rejection. Believe it or not, rejection from editors is not the worst kind of rejection. It's rejection from readers (and critics) that stings the most. When an editor rejects your poetry, you can at least comfort yourself by submitting the same poems elsewhere.
If a poem is published or posted and people slam or ignore it, getting a mulligan can be problematic. Not impossible, just challenging... Another thing is: you're going to get rejected no matter who you are. You could be Shakespeare and you'd still get your fair share of rejections. So what do you do? Well, I've had hundreds if not thousands of rejections and I can offer the following insights: 1) Expect to get them. Just like you accept getting sand in your stuff when you go to the beach. 2) Never answer them. Not privately by messaging the editor, or publicly, by whining to your social media circle. You can post an update as in "I was rejected today..." But resist the urge to defend yourself or criticize. 3) Take a close look at your bio and cover letter. Can you make improvements? If you have a dull bio (I do!) or a rambling (or sloppy) cover letter, it will likely influence editors' decisions. 4) If a poem has been rejected by more than 5 venues, see if it may need improving. Sometimes it's just a single line or even a single word that's putting people off. 5) Move on. Resubmit. 6) Only submit your best, most fully polished work. When an editor asks to see more work from you, they really mean it. If they don't make that specific request, you shouldn't read much else into the rejection. It's important to guard against the hurt of rejection because you can really get sidetracked by the glums. I'll talk about how to deal with online rejection, social media hate, and critics in a future post. Tally Poems Written: 311 Submissions: 51 Rejections: 21 (13 tiered) Acceptances: 0 Poem written today: "N/A" Still mixing song, "Coming Home." If you need a hand revising and polishing: 1) Have me do it for you! Click the "Poem Polisher" button below. I've helped lots of poets. 2) Use my 7 Secrets of Poetry pdf as a guide for revision.  Being a poet means engaging in a process of lifelong learning. No matter what you do, or how hard you work and study, you'll never master the art of poetry. But writing poems can help you master yourself. Believe it or not, this has something to do with the topic of rejection. When people ignore your work, reject your work, or criticize it, you're on the road to learning. Usually that road is very painful and involves a lot of frustration, soul-searching, maybe even swearing of vengeance. The point is, you'll be a different person for the experience no matter what. Whether you're a better person is up to you. The important thing to remember is that being a poet means embracing growth and change, both in your writing and in your life. Writing poems can help you connect with others and that's a wonderful feeling. But never forget the power that writing poems has to help you connect with you. Both who you are now, and who you might become. Tally Poems Written: 311 Submissions: 51 Rejections: 21 (13 tiered) Acceptances: 0 Poem written today: "n/a" Mixing music track "Coming Home." If you need a hand revising and polishing: 1) Have me do it for you! Click the "Poem Polisher" button below. I've helped lots of poets. 2) Use my 7 Secrets of Poetry pdf as a guide for revision. Categories All  Tell me if you agree with any or all of the following:
In my personal life, I like it best when I'm not being told what to do. Freedom and self-determination appeal to me a lot. But with creative works, I often feel drawn to traditional rules and modes. Not exactly old fashioned, but I'd say I'm more reluctant than some poets to get into wild experimentation with form or language. How about you? I, of course, have copious thoughts on each of those points above, but I'm more interested in your thoughts. Do you think rules are made to be broken? Or do poets need them? So let me know at pitchblackpoet@yahoo.com OR writerdan@mail.com OR just leave a message through the form below. Tally Poems Written: 311 Submissions: 51 Rejections: 21 (13 tiered) Acceptances: 0 Poem written today: "Elm" If you need a hand revising and polishing: 1) Have me do it for you! Click the "Poem Polisher" button below. I've helped lots of poets. 2) Use my 7 Secrets of Poetry pdf as a guide for revision. If you order a polish in May you get the 7 Secrets book free!!! Categories All  I write a lot of poems. Only about one in ten is worth a darn. I wish I knew a way to make this ratio higher. What's worse is, there's no pattern to creative inspiration. One day you might write two good poems in a row. At other times, it might be a week or two before you write anything decent. It's the same for most poets. Even great poets like T.S. Eliot and Emily Dickinson wrote more duds than masterpieces. Both Ezra Pound and Walt Whitman wrote more bad lines than good over their careers. I won't name any living, working poets by name -- but I'll say, I haven't seen many, if any, 21st century exceptions to this rule. And that's only seeing poets' published or posted works. My explanation for it is that we write poems for many different reasons, only some of which are connected to creating a poem for sharing or for publication. The only other answer I can think of is that writing good poems is just really tough and it takes a bit of luck like fishing or golf. Another possibility is it's just darned hard to do it all alone. Poetry is one of the only arts (like painting) where the artist is truly alone. Novelists have editors, musicians have producers, actors and actresses have directors and makeup people, and costume people, and people to blink for them, etc... Even dancers have a dance partner or a few musicians around. If you're a poet, it's all you. You think alone, write alone, and for the most part are the only "gatekeeper" of your works. It's a big job, and most poets resist being edited anyway. What do you think? Have you experienced poetic ratio? Are there other reasons forit? Found any hacks to get around it? Let me know! Tally Poems Written: 310 Submissions: 51 Rejections: 20 (13 tiered) Acceptances: 0 Poem written today: "Star Pools" Categories All  Here's a quick tip to help you overcome procrastination. It really works if you give it a chance, but there's a catch. You have to write in a notebook, or keep a continuous doc or series of docs somewhere. If you're a poet who likes to really write on the fly, like without any schedule, tools, or method, this may not work so well. For me, getting started is always the toughest part of writing. Whether I'm writing a poetry or prose, it's writing the first line or sentence that holds me up. There are various well-known tricks to get around this, such as starting off your work day by editing rather than writing, "free writing" in a journal or some other platform, and -- everyone's favorite -- guzzling gallons of strong coffee. But I've found, for poetry, what works best is just leaving a "hanging title." This means, when I finish a poem in my journal, I sometimes jot down a title for the next poem. I just dream up a cool title, note it down, then start my next writing session by filling in the blank part. That is -- the poem! Even if you only wind up with a few lines for a particular "hanging" title, this little trick will get you writing quickly each day. A couple caveats: 1) It's not usually best to jot down multiple titles. If you do that, you'll overwhelm yourself even if you don't think you're doing so and kill the spirit of the whole thing. That said, sometimes, you get a lot of ideas for titles, so what are you going to do? 2) If the poem starts coming right there as you're jotting down the title -- if you hear a first line or something -- go for it. If not, refrain from jotting down too many notes etc. Just get the title down and let the Muses work on the poem when you're not looking. 3) Don't write down a title unless you feel a spark. If you start writing "Cat Poem 55," "Cat Poem 56," etc., the tip probably won't work as well. That's about it. As always, your mileage is sure to vary. If you're the kind of poet who comes up with titles last, you may not like this technique. I don't use it every day, but I've found it really works to get me going in some cases, and it's resulted in a quite a few good poems. Tally Poems Written: 309 Submissions: 51 Rejections: 20 (13 tiered) Acceptances: 0 Poem written today: "Talk Candle" Categories All  I talk a lot about emotion in these blog-posts and the reason is because all good art, particularly poetry, is made of emotion. If you aren't willing to express emotion intensely, there's really not much point in trying to be a poet. The same is true if you just want to express one emotion over and over. If your poems are always happy or always sad, people will get bored with your work fast. The best thing you can do is to use a lot of different emotions, even in a single poem. I could cite hundreds of examples here, but let's just focus on two really famous poems. The first is "The Raven" by Edgar Allen Poe and the second is "Lady Lazarus" by Sylvia Plath. Sure, "The Raven" is famous for being synonymous for mourning, and rightly so, but if you look at the poem carefully you'll see it actually runs a gamut of emotions from boredom, to hope, to anger, and terror. Unrelenting grief is only one emotion, and it's profound, centuries strong sadness would not ring as fully as it does without a compliment of contrasting colors. Plath's poem is even more dynamic. It starts with submissive emotions of fear and self-loathing and rises to emotions that are best described as "godly." Along the way, Plath uses sarcasm, honesty, pity, anger, joy, and nostalgia to fuel her transformation from victim to avenging Goddess. That's what you want to do with emotion in a poem. You want to use it as both color and tempo simultaneously and you want to color with more than one crayon and keep time on more than a single drum. Tally Poems Written: 308 Submissions: 51 Rejections: 20 (13 tiered) Acceptances: 0 Poem written today: "Sisters" Categories All  Should you ever just give up on a poem? Some poems come out almost fully formed, just perfect straight out of the fire, like a gift from from the gods. Others have to be wrangled, sawed, sanded, polished and, in some cases, given a full body-transplant. What makes it worse is, a poem can be this close to brilliance and then it takes months and sometimes years to actually get it right. So you have a decision to make as a poet. Luckily, you get the chance to make the decision over and over. Basically, what you have to decide with each poem is: how much can revision help? Usually the answer is: a lot. Even if you only make small changes or a small change to a given poem, the results can be dramatic. There are times, though, when you just have to let go. Some poems just fail. Unfortunately, there's no rule when it comes to making this judgment call. And it's liable to be different, in any case, for each poem. Given, these vagaries, here's a few points that I've found helpful over the years:
I also have a thought on not revising or refusing to revise your poems: that's why your poems aren't working for anyone else but you. So do your poems a favor and shine them as best you can. If you hate revising and polishing, consider two options (best used together!): 1) Have me do it for you! Click the "Poem Polisher" button below. I've helped lots of poets. 2) Use my 7 Secrets of Poetry pdf as a guide for revision. Tally Poems Written: 307 Submissions: 51 Rejections: 20 (13 tiered) Acceptances: 0 Poem written today: "Street Steel" Categories All  As a poet, it's sometimes good to not know how you feel. "Nameless" emotions are often where great poems begin. Famous poems like "Kubla Khan," "The Chariot," or "The Road Not Taken" continue to defy emotional straightjacketing and -- without sacrificing meaning -- continue to lead readers to fresh emotional experiences for which there are no simple quantitative terms, but rather libraries full of analysis.
One of my favorite poets, Hart Crane, wrote a powerful essay on the theory of poetry called "General Aims and Theories." Crane was only in his twenties when he wrote the essay and it was in response to criticisms by Harriet Monroe. Basically, what Crane said was: a great poem can create a new word. Or, more specifically, it is as if a (successful) poem created a new word. A "word" that only that poem can capture, because it represents an emotional state for which we have no literal word. Two things I'd like you to take away from this. The first is that some poems, not all, are best off in creating a new "words", while others are best off celebrating existing "words." The second is that, yes, human beings have that many emotions. More than there are grains of sand in the world, or stars in the sky. We may fixate on the 6-8 basic colors, but we have an entire crayon box (the size of the universe) to color with. If you want to read a great series of poems that deal square-on with he search for a new poetic word, try reading Plath's "Bee Sequence" (click her picture above). What you'll see here is a poet using everything she has to try to understand who she is as an artist. Because Plath was a mystic, it was extremely difficult to find words, or even imagery to convey what she was going through. Like Nina, in Black Swan, she is transforming; she is becoming the Bee Queen. Poetry can lead you to the deepest parts of yourself and the deepest emotions that can be experienced. You have to be careful with intense emotions, but you can't write truly remarkable poetry without going into emotional places past existing "words." Tally Poems Written: 295 Submission Tally: 47 Rejections: 17 (10 tiered) Acceptances: 0 Poem written today: "Plain Poem"  The picture above is of Sylvia Plath, along with her daughter, Frieda, and her son, Nicholas. When the picture was taken, Plath and her husband, poet Ted Hughes, had just acquired a country house. The flowers in the picture are daffodils that grew by the thousands on their newly acquired land. To me, this is one of the saddest pictures in the world because I know quite well how the Plath story goes, as I'm sure most of you do, as well. If you don't know, suffice to say that both Plath and her son succumbed to mental illness and perished, decades apart, as suicides. Hughes has a wonderful poem about this picture called "Daffodils." Read it by clicking the picture. The closing image of the poem leaves no doubt that this is a poem of deep, almost unyielding, grief. Yet, if you look over the poem carefully, you'll see color, life, tactile sensations of joy and love. These are colors that contrast deeply with he poem's hard hitting theme. If the poem had been written less inventively it might have been all about tossing flowers on a grave with wolves howling in the background. And that Gothic flair is even something Hughes excels at -- but in this case he constructs a lexicon for his grief out of the beauty of life: Ballerinas too early for music, shiverers In the draughty wings of the year. On that same groundswell of memory, fluttering They return to forget you stooping there Behind the rainy curtains of a dark April, Snipping their stems. Go and do the same because, if you just use your black crayon for all your color, no-one will be excited to see what you do next. If you'd like some feedback or polishing for your poems, click one of the buttons below. AND don't forget to check out my 7 Secrets of Poetry guide, available now. Click the button below. Categories All |
