Secrets of Poetry part 2

Greetings and welcome to part two of the Secrets of Poetry! Since last time we looked at the mechanics of poetry, all the easy, technical things you can check off on a list to write a poem, this time we'll look at the gritty stuff. The gritty stuff, for lack of a better phrase, is all the artistic stuff, the stuff that's harder to quantify. But really, is usually the gritty stuff (the content of the poem) that makes a poem good. You can follow all the mechanics of poetry and make a nice rhythmic, rhyming poem, but it's the harder things like telling a story and conveying emotion that make poems stand out.

The Gritty Stuff

Telling a Story

One thing you can do to add more meaning and depth to your poem is to tell a story. As each liner stanza goes by, you take the reader through a sequence of events or on a journey. It's a pretty easy concept to understand, especially since books, movies, and songs almost if not always tell some kind of story. It's just easier to understand. There is even a whole kind of poem (ballads) that are just one long story, and was the way that people used to learn history when reading and writing was only for the elite. Often, ballads were set to music to make it even easier to remember.

Take Your Stand

Before the silver rocks and golden hills

Are slain by grey - the shadow of evil

Please follow me into the brighter day

And take up arms, the ancient darkness slay

Take up your sword, the blade of truth to wield

And from on high, the gift of faith, your shield

Put on your breastplate, clothed in righteousness

Put shoes and belt and helmet to the test

Now take your stand against the evil dark

Come see the line 'twixt good and evil stark

Now hearken to the mighty battle call

And charge with joy: "Our God is Lord of All!"

And when the battle has been fought and won

Come kneel and bow before the Christ, God's Son

And lay your battle trophies at His feet

Come taste the joy of Jesus' true love sweet

This is one of my favorite poems of the ones that I've written. Each of the four stanzas focus on a different scene in the story, starting from the call to begin a quest all the way to its completion. Of course, since there are only four stanzas, there's a lot of blanks along the way that could be filled in, either by writing more of the poem or turning it into an actual story. When you're telling a story in your poem, you can add as few or as many details as you like – just keep in mind how long you want your poem to be.

Conveying Emotion

If you're an aspiring writer like me, you probably know that there's quite a lot of overlap in between novel and poetry writing, especially in the gritty stuff. This is especially true if the meaning of your poem is to tell a story! But other than actually telling a sequence of events, another key thing in writing a good story or poem is to convey emotion. In novels, conveying emotion helps you connect with the character and fall in love with them so that you want to see how the story ends.

Poems are usually shorter, but the importance of emotion still stands – why should I care about the poem you've written unless it connects with me in some way? Then again, getting the emotions across can be a really hard thing, especially if you're not feeling them.

How Long

The tears of my heart and the cries of my soul

Are held by the One who will never let go

I'm broken and trampled by wandering feet

A crushed, fading flower with fragrance yet sweet

I've waited in darkness for conquering light

But all I have found are the terrors of night

How long must I wait until Jesus will come?

How long in the dark till the rise of the sun?

My enemies mock and my friends turn away

I'm losing the hope that there will be a day

When suffering ends and all wrongs are made right -

How long must it be till my faith is made sight?

Oh, God, I have waited and bled for Your name

But all my rewards are these ashes of shame

You promised me joy in the midst of the night

How long must it be till You look on my plight?

My sorrows pile up and are weighing me down

Repeated betrayals and scars are my wounds

I've nothing but tears and the bones in the dust

How long, oh my God, must I hold out my trust?

As Jesus once said in the garden of old

Lord, please take this cup, yet not my will but Yours

I'll sing in the silence, I'll pray through the rain

For I know that my pain will bring praise to Your name

It's obvious how the speaker of this poem is wrestling with pain, doubt, and despair, but how exactly? To borrow a maxim from the novel writing world, show, don't tell. Describe how the person is feeling and what they are doing rather than saying what or how they feel directly. In poems, this is especially easy because you can just use a lot of similes and metaphors. You could also personify their emotions, like making pain a smothering blanket or fear an ever-present monster, or even just change the way you word things. Someone who is sad and feeling down is more likely to see dark and dull colors and use sad and hopeless metaphors. Someone who is super excited probably won't be speaking in fancy, archaic English (with exceptions, of course).

For example, the speaker in this poem talks about being broken, trampled, and crushed; he's waiting, bleeding, and clearly suffering; and he compares himself to a fading flower in the darkness. All these similes, metaphors, and poignant imagery us connect with him and sympathize with his pain and despair. Without ever really directly saying it, we know just how the speaker is feeling.

Another important thing is how you and your poem, though that's not really related to conveying emotion. But, finishing where you started or going on a journey through different emotions can add a sense of completion and/or satisfaction to your poem. For this poem, the speaker starts with relative faith and trust in the goodness of God, goes through pain, hopelessness, and anger, and finally finishes with the declaration of stronger faith and resolve to trust and praise the goodness of God.

One final thing: just because you don't feel your poem conveys emotion well doesn't mean that it won't connect with others. Several times I've been told that something I've written is very emotional when I thought it was hardly emotional at all. 

Adding Meaning (Symbolism)

Adding meaning, or sneaking in hidden symbols, is often the best and most satisfying part of both reading and writing godly poems. A lot of the time, our message gets across easier when we don't say it directly, which can be both good and bad thing. At least from what I've seen, most of poetry analysis is trying to dig up the hidden symbolism and meaning behind the poem rather than the actual language itself (e.g. "this poem talks about how art, truth, and beauty are intertwined" rather than "this poem is written in iambic pentameter with alliteration on such a such a line…"). Sometimes the symbolism more obvious, and sometimes it isn't. The Pathway is a more obvious poem:

The Pathway

On a hill far away

Is a broken stone path

A path that many trod before

A small, narrow road

That leads to my home

Yet often, is easily ignored

It rises o'er mountains

Runs straight through the valleys

Through thick and through thin it runs true

Thornbush and bramble

Pitfall and trap snare

The road leads to life made anew

The path doesn't wander

As others e'er do

Forever the only straight way

First stop at the cross

Face up to your loss

The punishment - death - must be paid

Jesus died on that cross

He took our punishment

Into death and the grave He went

And three days later

He rose, our Savior

The power of sin fully spent

The old way is rocky

Stained red with martyrs' blood

The way is not easy or safe

But look to the end

When all things will mend

Run hard through it all, keep the faith

And when I cross the gap

The chasm of my death

Following the only true Way

I'll enter the gates

See God's smiling face

Rejoice, for in Heaven we'll stay

The path in this poem symbolizes the Christian's journey, like in Pilgrim's Progress. It builds on ideas mentioned in the Bible, like heaven being home, the road being straight and narrow, following Jesus has a price, and finally, a focus on the Gospel and getting to be with God at the end.

Dawn Watch, on the other hand, has subtler symbolism and meaning:

Dawn Watch

Hold on, my child, until the night is past

Remember there will one day be a dawn

For e'en within the night the shadows cast

They flicker in the fire and are gone

The wind blows cold and ice is in the land

So many lights have flickered and gone out

Fear not, my child, and hold on to my hand

Take courage, He has said we must not doubt

The darkness screams with cries of dying souls

Unending pains of loss strike hearts again

We must stand fast, my child, we must keep hold

And keep our fire alight until the end

No matter how our suffering goes on

We keep our weary watch until the dawn

So in this poem a mother is talking to her child, comforting him or her as they huddle beside their fire, keeping watch until the dawn. It's a beautiful picture, but what does it mean? Well, when I was writing this poem, I was thinking of a kind of allegory: so the Prince, King, or leader has gone away, and He has told His subjects or His following to light watch fires and stay awake through the night until He comes back. This mother and her child are one of them. It's winter and it's a land of eternal night, but they are watching and waiting for the promised dawn.

They've stayed awake, watching, for hours and years, but the King has still not returned. The wild creatures in the shadows have attacked watchfires, and some people have given up, fallen asleep, and let their fires go out, and so this mother and child have had to watch their companion watchfires go out one by one. The mother is encouraging herself as much as her child, reminding them of the King's promise: Dawn will be coming soon. Of course, you probably wouldn't get that from just the poem. But, ideas and symbolism of watching for Jesus and holding on until the dawn are clear enough – and the cost of holding on as well.

It's your choice whether you want to add symbolism, and how obvious you want to make it, but symbolism is a great way to send a message and add deeper meaning to your poem.

Creating a Picture

Imagery, or creating a picture in the reader's head, is on the fuzzy line between the mechanics in the gritty stuff. Imagery is technically listed as a literary device (e.g. mechanics), but the actual art of making a good description makes it really belong the gritty stuff in my opinion. Creating a picture is closely tied with all the other gritty things I've talked about, especially telling a story. It's kind of hard to like and follow story if you can't imagine the scene looks like.

On the Other Side

Awake! Come quickly, death is close at hand

The soldiers black are knocking on the door

Get out of bed and run, just like we planned

They've found us and they've come to settle scores

They smash the door and drag you through the street

They throw your precious treasures on the ground

They lash us for each friendly eye we meet

The secret of our story has been found

And now we stand before the blazing fire

To take the mark or to the fire fall

I'll make my stand and set my love up higher

But will you bear the trial to which we're called?

God give you strength and in His peace abide

And soon I'll see you on the other side

The easiest, but not necessarily the best, way to create a picture is to use a bunch of adjectives and adverbs – you know, the describing words like black, friendly, precious, blazing, higher, and quickly. The problem is, if you use too many adjectives in a row, it gets boring and makes your writing sound bad. That's not to say that adjectives and adverbs are bad, just use them wisely and have a purpose for putting them in.

Instead of filling your poem with adjectives to create a picture, especially if you're also trying to tell a story, is to make your verbs (action words) more descriptive. There is exceptions to this rule, like when your syllable count or rhyme scheme constrains you or the speaker of the poem just wouldn't use that word (more on that later). In this poem, the speaker is under stress and in a hurry, so he uses a lot of simple verbs like come, run, stand, and throw. However, "they lash us" rather than "they hit us".

Onomatopoeias can also make the story more vivid, because they sound like what they're describing. If you're also describing what is happening, the picture you're painting can quickly become very vivid.

How you present poems

The last thing you want to think about is how you present your poems. This could totally be a mechanical thing depending on whether you're talking about the font, stanza arrangement, etc. or not. However, the sneakier part of writing poems would be the voice, the specific way you arrange or omit your poem's punctuation, and the specific words you use to write your poem.

Breaking up a poem into the regular stanzas can make it seem unplanned or spontaneous, writing a poem in a humorous accent can help underline your point, adding italics or different punctuation can signal irony or clarify your thought, and using a handwritten writing font can make your poem seem more believable as a story or a letter. But most of all, the little changes in your wording can affect or completely change the meaning or tone of your poem. It might not be obvious, but the effects are there; it's all the little wording choices put together that makes the voice in the poem.

That's all for this post; next time I'll talk about different kinds of poems you can write!