Writing Poetry: How to Write a Poem That Will Captivate Your Reader

Writing poetry can be as simple as a few well-placed rhyming words, or it can be a complex arrangement of lines, stanzas, and rhyming patterns.

Poetry opens up an unlimited world of creative possibilities, and once you have a good understanding of the wide range of techniques and styles available, you can create your own unique expression of life – a poem that will captivate your reader.

An overview of poetry.

The history of poetry is as complex as the art form itself, and there have been many debates over the centuries about what constitutes a poem. The origins of poetry can be traced back to oral tradition, where a poem was used primarily for educational and entertainment purposes in the form of a ballad. Shakespeare made the Sonnet famous, a poetic form that fuses a delicate balance of narrative and lyrical qualities. With the advent of the printing press and the book, poetry became a highly respected literary style.

So what constitutes a poem?

Is a poem just a static literary form that must adhere to a particular rhyming pattern, a specific use of language, and a rigid structural format? The traditionalist would say that a poem should adhere to a strict rhyming pattern and that its appearance on the page should not deviate from the four-line stanzas that run down the page. The rebellious modernist would say that the rules are bound to be broken and writing a poem is a free and unfettered craft that is subject solely to the artistic whim of the poet.

I think the answer to what constitutes a poem lies in this statement: a poem is the perfect form of creative expression. What is your opinion? Does a poem allow a writer to express his feelings, thoughts, and experiences of the world better than a short story?

The 19th century classical poet and critic Mathew Arnold defined a poem as “the most beautiful, impressive, and most effective way of saying things, and hence its importance …” (Knickerbocker 1925, p. 446). But as great as this quote may seem, the art of writing a poem is so much more.

A poem allows the poet to reveal his thoughts or life experiences to the reader through an intensified use of language that appeals to the emotions. It is an invitation from the poet to the reader to undertake a journey of exploration of ideas. In general, the poet designs his perfect form of creative expression to engage the reader and elicit a response.

Here are seven techniques or tools that can help you write a poem that will captivate your reader:

You have access to a toolbox that is full of different techniques or poetic devices that will allow you to adequately convey your thoughts, feelings and experiences of the world such as:

1. A sound arrangement (a clever combination of alliteration and assonance – the repetition of consonant and vowel sounds), which create an internal rhyme and evoke music in our minds when we read the poem out loud. For example: assonance can create an internal rhyme like this line of poetry by Theodore Roethke “I wake up to sleep, and I take my awakening in stride …”

two. Enchantment (strategic line breaks that determine the beat and rhythm, which can highlight a certain phrase).

3. Pictures: Based on the vivid description of a picture to create a word picture. You can use concrete images, which are images that we can see or feel like cat, house, sun, rain. Abstract images denote concepts that we understand but cannot see or feel as knowledge, freedom, or justice. An abstract image can be both conceptual and emotional.

4. Metaphor / Simile: figures of speech that reveal hidden similarities and compare two ideas for poetic effect.

5. Rhyme: rhyming words or lines that end in identical sounds. I think I know whose forests these are. Even though his house is in the village … Robert Frost.

6. Tone: a particular use of the voice such as melancholic, happy, thoughtful, which is determined by the choice of specific words. This is an excerpt from Edna St. Vincent Millay’s Departure.

Wish I could walk until my blood gushed

And let me fall, never move again

On a shore that is wide, because the tide is low,

And the overgrown rocks are bare for rain.

But capsize or dock, where the road I take

Bring up, it’s little enough that I care

And it’s little that I care what a fuss they will make

Huddled dead in a ditch somewhere.

7. A poem is a vibrant and versatile art form. There are many styles of composition available: free verse (which does not conform to traditional rhyming stanzas or regular meter or rhythm), or an elegy (a poem used as a lament or as a moving memento for a person or a event).

Of course, these techniques are just some of the tools a poet can use, and some of these techniques can be used to write stories, but they pertain specifically to the world of poetry.

Poetry teaches us about the beauty and power of language and the richness of the written word. By using a combination of available poetic techniques, a writer can find complete freedom in the expression of thoughts, ideas, and feelings.

John Redmond defines a poem not so much as a word structure, which must conform to a set of rules and a particular form, but as an experiment with being, which has its own personality and value; and “… any good poem should make us feel like explorers of a new planet, embarking on a momentous adventure … [a] A good poem will try to maintain the openness, the sense of possibility, that every reader feels when he opens a book for the first time ”(2006, p. 2).

To maintain openness and a sense of possibility, the poet must keep the reader in mind when writing a poem, using language and imagery that the reader can engage with and therefore feel like they can join the poet on the journey. exploration.

Ultimately, the role of a poem not only serves for self-expression, it can teach us something new and also capture our imagination and emotions.

References:

Knickerbocker, William S 1925. “Matthew Arnold’s Theory of Poetry”. The Sewanee Review 33 (4). Johns Hopkins University Press: 440-50, via Jstor.

Redmond, John 2006, How to Write a Poem, Blackwell Publishing, USA p. two.

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