HOW TO WRITE POETRY, BY OLAN L. SMITH

How to Write Poetry, an Introduction

How to Write Poetry, by Olan L. Smith

Written for the Poet's Pub, 2017

A poem can be so many things, from a single thought to an epic story, and everywhere in between. These things, however, a poem must have; it must tell a story and have a beginning, middle, and end. A poem can be a single line; it can lift you to the highest peaks; or it can make you cry. A poem can turn your mind inside out with wonderment, or it can simply bring a smile to your face or a chuckle to your lips. Life is poetry, and when you write it down, it becomes a poem.

When you write a poem, think of writing it in blocks and bits of information, because the human brain can only hold at most nine bits of information at once (Miller's Law), so use stanzas and break up your poem into blocks of information. If you want to write a poem without stanzas and it is long, you risk the reader not reading it. The human brain needs to break down the poem into manageable sections. Words are broken up into syllables for this reason, so the brain can process them. The authors break their story into paragraphs with thesis sentences and close the paragraph with a summation and segue. Telephone numbers are broken down into sections: 816-555-3413, etc. If you write a poem without breaks and it is long, forget about the reader going back and rereading if they get lost in the meaning. The brain wants to organize what it sees as chaos, so make your poem anything but chaotic. For example, take the sonnet.

The English Sonnet is a 14-line block, broken up into 4 internal quatrains and a single couplet, so know your constraints, and when writing free verse, please make it easy on the reader and give us stanzas, so it's not a burden to read. If the world can just quote one line of your poetry, a hundred years from now, you will know you have succeeded in changing the world forever, and you have made a difference.

A poem has a shape; if it looks like a poem, it is a poem—visual information that is given to the brain by the eyes—but it can also be in block form, so the poem covers the whole spectrum of writing. Block-form poetry has to convey to the reader that it is a poem without looking like a poem, which is hard to do because the writer has to prove it is a poem with his or her skills. Most of all, a poem will take your breath away, and when you are finished, it will make you say to yourself, "Wow, what did I just read?" Don't waste the reader's time. Make your poem say something; make the reader think.