The following articles are essays on how to write poetry, by Olan L. Smith, aka Cotton Jones. I was asked to write these article for Wattpad's Poets Pub's Handbook for Poets, 2017. I am collecting them here for my site so they may be easy to find. Love, peace, freedom (Lpf), Olan

Self-written poems about my everyday feelings and thoughts to which some of you might relate.

Principles on how to write powerful poetic passages, with explanations of how and why these rules work. I'm not saying I write great poetry by any means, but I do take pride in it. I've read on poetry in a few places, but Edgar Allan Poe's "The Poetic Principle" was the best; most of the following tips are based on that work. If you can, however, you should read the original, even though it can be a bit difficult to understand at times. Here, I've distilled the main points in modernized language. Enjoy!