Consider this post a double-tip, because what I'm about to tell you will not only improve your writing, it will get you writing and keep you writing. But be forewarned, this isn't a tip for the timid! You'll need some creative backbone to follow along.

Ready?

Here's the tip. Write about something that makes you angry. Thunderously angry.  Something that makes you want to explode with emotion and opinions, something that pushes every button you've got and threatens to overload you. 

The reason you need to do this is because, simply put, this is where some of your best writing is waiting to happen. That's why you're broiling with emotion, because the anger inside of you is also a flare gun signaling: "There's poetry here!"

Don't believe me? Try reading Plath's "Daddy," Ginsberg's "Howl," Shakespeare's Hamlet,  or crank up some classic rap, metal, or blues. Anger is as much a part of artistic expression as love or beauty and often, it's best when they're all mingled together.   

Here's a simple test. If I asked you to write 500 words on a politician you most admire, it'll probably take you longer to come up with something than if I ask you to do 500 words on the politician who most ticks you off. It's much harder to write from a perspective of adulation than it is from anger.

There's really no limit, either. You can go to Spinal Tap 11 with your anger and it won't hurt anything. You can murder's, mangle, shred, explode, and crucify your enemies. You can ridicule them with language, you can imagine them shredded in a chipper. Or even better you can somehow turn them into  lovers and friends. 

Just remember: art is catharsis and healing, but it's also a refuge. So don't spill enough imagined blood (or tears) to ruin your sanctuary or scare or gross out others from visiting and sharing your stories.

I'm not saying you should always write from anger; I'm not saying you should write from anger most of the time. I'm simply saying: don't be afraid to write from an angry place because it's often a source of incredible poetry and it will help you let go of emotions that might be weighing you down if not for the poems you write.
​@BlackstonDan

Notice the title says: make new readers, not "attract" new readers, or "grow" new readers. 

We're done with all that. ​It's too much work for too little reward!

Kidding aside, I'm going to offer another super-easy poetry tip today that will help you gain more readers. If you use it well, it may be the most important tip you ever stumble across. It's easy, but it can be a bit painful if you're not used to doing it. 

No, it's not about using double-entendres, although maybe I should blog on that sometime. No, this tip is much more basic. Here it is:

Imagine that every time you read a new poem, you gain a new reader for your poems.

Clearly, this isn't  logistically the case, but it's most certainly the case in spirit. And here's why. Reading poetry is the single most effective (and necessary) way to improve as a poet. Period. Add to that most of us don't read nearly enough poems and you have a "magic" formula that's more true than anything that would stand up to a  computer. Try it!

But only imagine a new reader for yourself when you're reading a new poem, preferably by a poet you've never read. Each time you read and absorb a new poet, pretend you've gained a new reader for your work because what you learn by reading another poet will make your work stronger. Someone who's read ten thousand poems has an advantage in composition over someone who's only read ten. 

The tip works even better if you read both contemporary and classic poets. Don't be afraid of new poets. Love and crave them as you love and crave readers because one leads to the other. 

​@BlackstonDan

Today's poetry tip is one of the simplest, yet most painfully difficult, tricks in the book.

It's like this... Take out one of your favorite "finished" poems -- don't choose a published one or one you've posted. Now pretend someone has a gun to your head and you have to cut a line. An entire line. 

Choose one line, lop it off, and read the poem back to yourself. Is it better? If so, lose the line for good. 

If not, choose another line to cut. And so on, until you've tried every line. If every line must remain, congratulations, one of two things happened. Either you're incapable of revising your work or you've written a perfect poem.

Now honestly, which do you think is the case most of the time? 

In prose we're often told to "murder your darlings" but it's just as true in poetry. One thing to keep in mind is this: if the line you scrub has some tasty figurative language or a cool turn of phrase or just sings like a blackbird, you can use it elsewhere, perhaps in another poem, or even a blog post like I just did, in case you cared to notice.

Try this maneuver in any poem you're serious about and see if it doesn't make your work much stronger. It might be tougher to cut lines from your poems than to let a stranger give you a hair cut, but in this case, you're the one holding the scissors, so don't be afraid to trim. Your poems and readers will thank you.
 ​​@BlackstonDan

Are you surprising with your poems? You should be. People love invention and they love to  be surprised. As an artist, it's your job, your sacred task, to make things seem new even when they aren't. 

Surprise is the best way to grab attention. It's also the best way to keep people thinking about your work after they stop reading.

So how should you use surprise? 

The answer is: surprise me! But keep one very valuable caveat in mind: if you hit with too many surprises at once, joy turns to confusion, then anger and your readers will just  tune out.

But if you sprinkle surprises throughout your poems, you'll grown an enthusiastic audience.

Let's look at some examples. Gwedolyn Brooks's poem: "We Real Cool" surprises from word go because it uses a slang title. Next, it has a subtitle: "​"The Pool Players. Seven at the Golden Shovel." that sounds like a title you'd most likely find on a  painting, not a poem.

The next surprise is, despite the long title, the poem's over almost before it begins!

Which is the whole point right?

We / Die soon. 

The ending is, of course, a smashing surprise with death popping up on the penultimate word. But there are other surprises. The use of three word stanzas; the use of a single word refrain at the end of each line. The vanishing of the refrain at the end. 

That's how to use surprise like a master!

Joy Harjo's poem "Eagle Poem" is a very predictable poem all the way until the closing lines. It's exactly the kind of poem you'd expect her to write and this is intentional. It is a nod to tradition. But the closing lines pack a big revelation:

In beauty.
In beauty.

It's not only that the poem takes a sudden turn toward absolutism and beauty, but that it repeats the line. Why should it do this?

Because the two matching lines show a harmonic resonance that hints as to what makes beauty. Harmony. So big Platonic thoughts at the end of an overtly Native American meditation. Universal Mind manifested in two lines.

The lesson is: don't be afraid to take chances in your poems and do things that will make your readers say "Crickey!" even if they're young and not British.

Think of your poems as time bombs. Each line brings the reader a tick closer to the explosion. 

All through the poem, some part of the reader sweats it out, wondering how big of a bang is waiting and wondering if they'll be wounded, or maybe even scarred. 

Some poems, like Eliot's The Wasteland  are atom bombs that vaporize cities of  tradition, aesthetics, and comfort. Others, like many of the poems we all write but hopefully don't show, go off like duds. They make a corkscrew of smoke, more pathetic than profound.

What I'd like to consider in this post is how the metaphor of the time-bomb helps us understand the role of a poem's penultimate line. That's the line right before the last line. And I'm telling you here and now something you'll likely never hear from anyone else and that's this: a poem's penultimate line is just as important as the closing line. Sometimes more important. 

Not only is it sometimes more important; it's far easier to flub. Why? Because this is where most poets tend to ease off. It's where we all tend to get a bit slack. It's an understandable urge.  After-all, it's the job of the last line to tidy everything up and make the "boom" really go off. Right?

Well, not really. In fact, I think it's better to look at your penultimate line as a tee for the last line, or even as "fanfare" for it. Readers will feel the acceleration whether you take advantage of it or not. If you slack off just as they get ready to climax, well we all know how that goes!

Let's take a look at three obvious examples of great penultimate lines. The first one is from Shakespeare's Sonnet 18: 

"So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,"

Here the Bard takes full advantage of the penultimate thrill by injecting newness right before the close -- the idea of a group of men, rather than a single speaker, and the idea of overcoming mortality through art. The poem makes a sudden shift from the personal to the universal and does so precisely on the penultimate line.

​Here's another brilliant penultimate line, from Sylvia Plath's "A Winter Ship:"

"The sun will diminish it soon enough:"

With a single line, Plath waves away her brilliant imagery -- her poetic evocation of a winter seascape in all its frigid glory. She simply introduces the image of the sun, and with it the obvious connotation of melting ice and snow, to turn her poem around like the most graceful of skaters on the thinnest of blades.

Finally,  Joy Harjo's poem 'Ah, Ah" uses an increasingly more intense  set of call and response couplets. She shifts the enjambment in the penultimate line and capitalizes on the reader's natural excitement by connecting the final "response" line to a claim of eternal being:

"on our return, over the net of eternity thrown out for stars."

This poises the reader at the edge of wondering if the "Ah Ah" refrain will endure. Of course, it can't do otherwise, but the suspense is what drives the poem's final sacred theme straight into the heart and mind.

These are brilliant tip-of-the-iceberg examples to get you started thinking a little more deeply about your penultimate lines. That was mine; I wish you good luck with yours!

@BlackstonDan ​

Every poem has a villain. From the gentlest haiku to the stormiest saga. Yet, I've the feeling many poets (myself included) seldom reflect deeply enough on this aspect of poetry. That's understandable -- there are simply too many other fascinating (read: less prosaic) facets of a poem to consider than the banal concept of antagonist. Villains are for novels, stories, comics, and movies!

Well, they're also for poems. Some are very easy to find, such as Plath's titular "Daddy," or mortality in Frost's  "Nothing Gold Can Stay. " Some villains are archetypal, like Poe's Raven, while others are deeply specific, such as Katharyn Howd Machan's "On Learning That My Daughter’s Rapist Has Been Taught to Write a Poem." 

Even when you think a poem has no antagonist, it usually does. Take a poem like James Dickey's "The Dusk of Horses." Read as a pastorale, the poem seems enemy-free. The tip-off is the opening words "Right under their noses..."  This shows that something has been hidden. The antagonist is implied in the act of "blinding." Of course, we all know this poem is an allegory for political apathy, right?

Let's look at a poem where the antagonist might be a bit harder to find. A full poem. A famous poem. This poem:

In a Station of the Metro 
The apparition of these faces in the crowd:
Petals on a wet, black bough.

I'm sure you're now saying, "The antagonist in Pound's poem is also mortality. So it wasn't hard to find." Well I beg to differ. I think the antagonist in this poem is the "apparition" of life, the veil of it. Which tells us that the "black bough" is where the real action is.

This is all quite easy to follow. The real question is: how can you use villains in your poems? The answer is astoundingly straightforward: just do it. But try to think outside the box. And be careful not to let your villain take over your poem.

Here's a few tips on poetic villains that should even work for prose writers:

• The best villains are sympathetic. Part of the reader should love them. 
•  If your villain is too over-the-top your poem will be comical.
• One villain per poem is generally sufficient. Again, a plethora or list of baddies turns into comedy. Or yawn inducing litany.
• Inanimate objects are fabulous villains. Try "Tractor" by Ted Hughes, for an obvious example. 
• Matching villains to unexpected emotions can be powerful.  Roethke's "To an Anthologist" is a banishing poem that ends in a humorous plea.

I make the same plea to you!
​
 @BlackstonDan  

Follow me on Twitter to get more tips like this!   @BlackstonDan  

Titles are important. So important,  you'll  see  more posts on this blog about how to sharpen them and make them pop.  The reason titles are so important is because they're the first thing readers see when they encounter your poem. The title of a poem is like a face; it makes an immediate, virtually irreversible, first impression.

A title is also like a scent. It tells the reader what kind of dish has been cooking.  If your look or scent is wrong, you'll scare people. If your poem title is  confusing, dull, or misleading, you'll either lose readers before they read the first line of your poem or make them wish they never read it. The title sets more than expectations; it whets appetites.

It's the job of your poem to satisfy the hunger.

Great, Daniel. But how?

Like I said, it's a deep topic. For this post, I'm only going to offer two tips. See how these work out for you and make sure to follow me at Twitter and friend me at Facebook so you'll be first in line for future tips. 

The first tip is fairly straightforward: don't be boring. The best way to do this is also the easiest. Be sure your title is a sequence of words that's never been used before.  It's easier than it  sounds, believe me. Just take a moment to add, subtract, or substitute something from your draft title. 

Here's some examples:

 "The Birthday Cake" to  "A Frosted Year"
"Letting Go" to "Losing Wounds"
"Echoes and Memories" to "Time Bounces"
"Walk With God" to "My God Legs"

It's perfectly fine to write a "used" title for your first draft because that helps you focus on theme. Take a few minutes after you're done writing the poem to play with the title and make something new. It's a lot of fun.

The second tip's super easy.  And very powerful.  After you finish your poem, read the title and the last line, skipping everything in between.  Do you feel  excited or moved in any way? If not, you need a new title. It's possible you need a new ending line, but in my experience, it's the usually the title. 

In any case, look for that motion between your title and closing line. The more it sizzles; the better chance you're on to something good.

Please consider friending me on Facebook if you haven't already.

I'd also really appreciate it if you followed me on Twitter -- I update virtually every day with tips, news, and markets for writers and poets.

​@BlackstonDan  

Follow me on Twitter to get more tips like this!   @BlackstonDan  

Today I'm going to share a simple trick to infuse your poems with life and personality. The tip's very easy to grasp, effortless to employ, and works as consistently as whiskey. But, like whiskey, a little can go a long way!

In other words, there's potential danger in this tip, so consider yourself warned.... 

The gist of the tip is this: use people, particularly parts of people, to paint with in your poetry. This is a bit different from writing of poem about a person, or even writing about a part of a person as I did in my poem "Picasso's Eyes."

In this case, instead of writing directly about a person, we're going to use them as spice. For example:

"The Mozart night...."
"Poe-like shadows..."
"Tall as Lincoln's hat..." 

You can also use people as verbs:

"Lebron-ed to victory... "
"Einstein-ed a fix... "
"Oprah-ed the crowd... "

This works with groups (or teams):

"Cursed as the  Cubs... "
"Blind as the KKK... "
"Rich as the cast of.... "

You get the idea. Another really effective variation is to use something a person or group is know for wearing, having, or using, such as:

"Newton's apple..."
"Joan of Arc's sword... "
"Holmes's pipe... "

These are bland examples by design because I want to make a larger point, not distract you with my inventiveness. The more specific you can be, the better. So if you said "Brady's trophy" instead of "winner's trophy" it will carry all that legendary power.

If I wrote: "The wind whistled all afternoon" that's fairly poetic, but: "The wind McCartneyed all afternoon" is better.  Assuming people still remember Paul McCartney! If it was stormy, you might say "Hendrixed." 

But that's where you have to be careful, or you slip into irony. If you want to be ironic fine, but there's a danger here. For example, if I said: "I changed by tire with "Elon Musk precision," this can only be read humorously. Or you better get a better idea of what Elon Musk actually does, or at least purports to do.
 
You don't have to use famous people, either, but if you go "local" be sure to get enough of the person in so everyone gets the connotation. If you say, "the sky looked scary, like my friend Tammy when she gets mad" that has a much different impact than: "the sky looked like my dad after ten drinks."

The technical term for this is: personification. You're writing about an object, action, or quality as though it's a person. This is slightly different from anthropomorphism where you describe non-human or inanimate things as acting in human ways. As I said, the distinction is slight and may not even be meaningful, but it's there. 

In my experience, this kind of personification has no limit. And it really draws people into a poem because, take a look around, what people are interested in is ... people.

 ​If you find this tip useful in any way, please consider friending me on Facebook.

I'd also really appreciate it if you followed me on Twitter -- I update virtually every day with tips, news, and markets for poets.

​@BlackstonDan
  

Follow me on Twitter to get more tips like this!   @BlackstonDan

This is a repost of an earlier tip. I'm just moving it to the blog.
​
Here's a fast tip to pump up any poem.

Remember, you only have a few seconds of trust and interest from your reader before they yawn their way to something more exciting.

So you need to grab attention as fast as you can.

Titles are important.

But so is...

Your opening word.

Here's a list of very common, but very bad, choices:

The
I
She
He
When
As
For
My

​When a poem starts with these words, you bore (and risk losing) the reader, especially if the reader is an editor who reads a thousand poems a month. 

Am I saying you can't start a great poem with the words in that list? No. What I'm saying is: if you want your poem to stand out, you should make every word count. Particularly the first word.

Now, here's the secret to getting the most out of your first word.

Use a strong verb.

​Verbs are what give poems motion, energy, direction, and pulse. When you start your poem with an action word, it pulls the reader in. 

Here are some examples of good verbs to use to start you poem:

Absorb
Atomize
Balloon
Chew
Devour
Erase
Explode
Gobble
Gorge
Puff
Snowball
Supersize
Wolf
Yowl

As an editor and poet whose read and submitted more poems than I have hairs left on my head, I can tell you that starting a poem with a strong verb like one of those above totally works. 

The rest of the poem has to be good, but if you start with a verb, you can bet you'll get people to read on! 

Try it.

Should you do this in every poem? Of course not! But you should pay attention to your verbs in every poem.

​If you find this tip useful in any way, please consider checking out one of my poems linked below:

I'd also really appreciate it if you followed me on Twitter -- I update every day with tips and markets for poets.

​@BlackstonDan
​
For bonus impact try to use a series of connected verbs throughout your poem. For example, verbs associated with a particular event or motive. You could use "mix," "bake," "slice," and "serve," for example, as steps in baking a cake, but apply them to something completely different, like falling in love.

​Also, if you look closely at the list of verbs, you'll see another big poetry secret: noun-verbs. Noun-verbs are nouns like "table," "knife," or "hammer" that also work as action words; in other words: verbs. In fact, one of the  lucky things about writing poems in English is virtually any noun can be turned into a verb.

I challenge you to think of an English noun that can't be used as a verb. 
  © 2022 Daniel E. Blackston 

Follow me on Twitter to get more tips like this!   @BlackstonDan                                                                   

​Color's crucial to poetry. But as much as you might want to use words like "azure," or "verdant," or "purpurean" or even plain old: "blue," "green," or "purple," your readers (and editors) are eye-thirsty for new rainbows.

And they want shiny  words for every color. In every new poem.

"Impossible!" you say.

Nope.

Not even the least bit difficult if you use this trick. And not only is this trick easy; it's fun.

Here's what you do. Instead of using your handy color thesaurus (or thesaurus in general) you use your imagination to visualize places, things, and even people that fit the color in question.

I'll give you an example. In my poem "Picasso's Eyes" I wanted to end the poem by stating how black Picasso's eyes were: just "Spinal Tap" level black. But in our current age of the Kali Yuga, black happens to be the most worn out crayon in the box. 

So, here's what I came up with:

"Slick pigments black as rues"

For those of you who know even less French than I do, "rues" means "streets." I compared his eyes to dark Paris streets. I still used the word "black" but I powered it up with something new.

In another poem I used "bone-colored foam" instead of "white" in describing a wave. In yet another poem I used "a rose on a pond" to describe something red and shiny.

In one case I even described moonlight silver as "sunlit sands" which may be a stretch, I admit. But I'll point out that that's what moonlight actually is. Unless you think the moon is made of cheese.

Let's try some simple examples.

Blue:  "prize ribbon," "dead monitor," "jay feather," "smurf-colored."

Green: "turtle colored," "Kermit colored," "avocado," "Martian."

Red: "stop sign," "rooster,"  "holly," "poppy."

Yellow:  "honeycomb," "aphid," "baby chick," ""road sign."

Often, you'll need to pair up your new color-phrase with the old word. For example, "road sign yellow." So don't abandon the old standbys, just give them new dance partners. 

But be careful with his trick because a single color might not only take over a line; it might try to take over your whole poem. Which may not be a bad thing!

What you really want to do is dig deep in your memoires and feelings to find colors that hit hard emotionally, because if they strike you that way, there's a good chance others will feel the same.

Colors are emotion and vice-versa. So when you express color in new ways with this technique, you're actually finding new "words" for your emotions. Or even "new" emotions. 

Speaking of which, I hope you'll check out my newly live Desert Nudes sequence to see what I mean! But don't click the link if you're offended by erotic images.   

​If you find this tip useful in any way, please consider checking out my poems link below.

I'd also really appreciate it if you followed me on Twitter -- I update  a lot with tips and markets for poets.

​@BlackstonDan
​
Email me for a bonus tip: writerdan@mail.com

  © 2022 Daniel E. Blackston