The Secrets of Poetry by Grace

Hi! Mom has given me the blog for a while, and I thought I'd do a series on writing poems. This is the first part of four, about the mechanics and easy parts of writing poetry.

The Mechanics of Poetry

Basic Patterns, Rhyme & Meter

Poetry isn't strictly based on patterns, rhyme, and meter, but pretty much every poem excluding free verse has some sort of structure. Most poems generally rhyme, and a lot of them have some sort of  meter (rhythm), and almost all poems have a pattern of some sort.

Poetry patterns can be anything from repeating a certain line to an overall structure. For example, each stanza (poetic paragraph) could start with the same line, or it could focus on a different angle of the overall theme. Hiding little patterns inside your poems can be the most fun part of writing poems, wondering if other people will notice what you did.

The most common type of meter is iambic, which means the words go ba-bum. If you think about it, a lot of our everyday speech is actually iambic. Shakespeare wrote his plays in blank verse, which is a poem in iambic pentameter (five iambs, or ten  iambic syllables) that doesn't rhyme. You don't have to stick to one strict rhythm, but I suggest you pick one kind of meter for a stanza or theme and keep it mostly intact throughout the poem. It makes your poem a lot easier to read.

Rhyme is something we all should know and is probably the most famous part of poetry. A whole lot of poems use some sort of rhyme, though it's not strictly necessary. There's many kinds of rhyming you can choose from, including near rhyme, eye rhyme, internal rhyme, and end rhyme. Basically, two rhyming words sound similar (or the same), and you can put them at the end of different rhymes (end rhyme) or within the same line (internal rhyme). Sometimes the words only look similar and don't sound the same, and those are called eye rhymes. At least for me, rhyme comes naturally when writing poetry and is a major part of how I write my poems.

Make sense? Let's see an example:

Take Me To Renago

Take me to Renago

That fair land far away

Take me to Renago

Where night melts into day

With fairest flourish of silvery light

The garment of day and the emblem of night

Take me to Renago

To lands of deepest gold

The rivers in the valleys

So small that I may hold

The clearest crystal of silvery dew

As old as the hills, and yet suddenly new

Take me to Renago

With cloud-embroidered lace

Descending on the hilltops

Caressing broken face

The shattered Shiloh restored, healed anew

Renewed in the healing, restored by the truth

Take me to Renago

Away from this world

Of sorrows and sighings,

Of hope crushed and furled

From rueful regrets to the land of pure life

The morning of dawning that bringeth delight

Take me to Renago

The land that stayeth pure

The beauty out of ashes

The love that stayeth sure

The golden world's reflection that yet remains unstained

The echo of true homeland that calls out across the plains

The obvious pattern here is that each stanza has six lines, and the first line is always "Take me to Renago." Some subtler patterns include how the last two lines of every stanza are connected to each other but are different from the previous four lines, like a mini stanza; and how each stanza concentrates on describing Renago rather than pleading with the hearer or telling them how to get there.

As for rhyme and meter, the second and fourth lines of each stanza always rhyme, and so do the fifth and six, but the first and third lines don't. (The fast way of expressing this is ABCBDD.) The meter stays the same across stanzas, but it changes depending on the line. The first four lines are iambic  trimeter (three ba-bums, iambs, per line), and the last two vary, depending on the stanza. Sometimes they are dactylic (bum-bum-bum), but mostly they're a mix of different meters.

Stanzas, Syllable Count, & Symmetry

Another essential thing to think about when you are writing poems is how you are going to divide the stanzas. Depending on the kind of poem you're writing, stanzas can be either long or short, regular or irregular. Generally, it's a good idea to to keep your stanzas regular especially if you are making a structured poem. People find it easier to read short blocks of text rather than long ones.

If you find making a consistent rhyme or meter difficult you can try experimenting with  syllable count. For example, you could make one line of every stanza ten syllables, or make each successive line one syllable longer. I'll take more about shape poems, which use syllable counts, in a later post.

Symmetry is another way to think about patterns. Symmetry can be having the same rhyme scheme, meter, or structure, but generally when I think about symmetry I think more about the pattern of meaning between stanzas. For example, this one:

Before the Gates

Before the gates of pearl gleaming

City of the golden land

To see the world so healed and perfect

Through the end I long to stand

Before the walls like jasper shining

Now at last I've come to rest

The road so straight and narrow trodden

Coming to complete my quest

Before the golden streets of Zion

God shall wipe my tears away

Enrobed in white, declared as righteous

In the Temple I shall stay

Before the flowing crystal river

On the streets as clear as glass

The leaves bring healing for the nations

When the end has come to pass

Within the brightest city's limits

Never more shall there be night

The name of God upon our foreheads

For the Lamb shall be our light

The symmetry here is pretty clear: each stanza has four lines, and again, the beginning of each stanza starts with a similar line. Each stanza takes a different angle describing the new Jerusalem beginning with "Before the..." The last stanza is the exception, where it is "Within the brightest city's limits," which highlights the ending. As for syllable count, the consistent meter kind of automatically makes it the same from stanza to stanza, since meter is also based on syllables, it only makes sense.

Personification

Personification is a word that gets thrown around a lot in poetry and creative writing in general. It just means that you're giving human qualities to a non-human object or animal It actually happens a lt more often than you think. "The cat meowed at me, begging for food" is an obvious one, but "The shelf leaned precariously against the wall" isn't.  This poem is absolutely full of personification:

The Land of Light

The sea rolls, the sky waves

The clouds fly, the moon paves

A silver path o'er silent sea

That leads to distant lands of peace

The wind screams, the bird cries

The storm cracks, the world sighs

A long-forgotten song of hope

In broken lands that merely cope

The hills rise, the plains run

The mountains stand, the beasts lunge

Still reaching for that broken path

That goes beyond the world of wrath

The trees breathe, the land waits

The leaves bend, the city gates

Are open wide for coming King

Returning to renew all things

The child sings, the girls dance

The men redeemed, the second chance

Extended through the darkest night

It brings us to this land of light

I don't need to explain this one, do I?

Simile & Metaphor

Similes and metaphors often get mixed up but they are probably the most essential tools to use in poetry. (That is, if you don't count rhyme, meter, imagery..) Similes are comparisons that admit they are comparisons, so they use comparison words like 'like' or 'as.' Metaphors are sneakier and don't use comparing words. When you are writing poetry, you want to be descriptive, so of course you are going to need to use some form of comparison. It is also a lot nicer and less messy than "the big, bright, hot, yellow, scorching sun."

The Paradox of Humanity

It was as soft as silk, but hard as stone

Blackened crystal covered in velvet

Bleeding flesh behind steel doors

Completely helpless, wholly self-sufficient

This is the paradox of a broken heart

It was as strong as steel, but weak as water

Polluted smoke within silver coverings

Lonely tears surrounded by angry thorns

Aimless wandering, crushing purpose

This is the paradox of a wounded soul

It was as sure as a mountain, but fleeting as dust

Inner strength concealed in tattered canvas

Aching weakness hidden behind smiles

Ever breaking, always healing

This is the paradox of a bleeding body

It was as tough as obsidian, but brittle as glass

Fleeting whisper held together by string

Indestructible substance broken in pieces

Callous barriers, too tender to touch

This is the paradox of a shattered spirit

It was as clear as crystal, but dark as the night

Open doors to endless mazes

Flashing weapons in peacemaking gestures

Innocent naïvety, war-torn cunning

This is the paradox of a twisted mind

It's as simple as dirt but complex as creation

Perfect purity in endless malice

Dying dust reaching for eternal glory

Searching for hope, spurning the truth

This is the paradox of fallen humanity

This poem is all about stark paradoxical contrasts showing the fallen human condition, so it is stuffed with both similes and metaphors, like  "It was as soft as silk, but hard as stone." The key thing to look .for when you are trying to find similes is "like" or "as," like the beginning of each stanza. Most of the other lines are metaphors, since they don't use any comparing words but just state things as a fact.

The comparisons paint a beautiful picture, no?

More Literary Devices

Of course there are many other literary devices (things you can use in poems) than the ones I've talked about. Some of them include:

• Alliteration: using words that stat with the same letter (like "fairest flourish").
• Allusion: referencing something without mentioning it directly (Before the Gates is a poem about the New Jerusalem).
• Assonance: using words with the same vowel sound. It's a kind of rhyming, but it came be inside the words rather than the beginning or the end. Often, assonance are spread out so there are several words in between (like "the trees breathe" or "That leads to distant lands of peace").
• Consonance: using words with the same consonants instead of vowels (like "world of wrath").
• Onomatopoeia: words that sound like the sounds they're describing (like "crack").

Well, thanks for reading this (really) long post! I'll talk more about the gritty stuff in poems next week.