Secrets of Poetry part 4

Hello again! This is the fourth and final post of my series The Secrets of Poetry. This time, let's talk about what to do when you get stuck and don't know what to write, let alone how to write. 

What do you do when you don't know what to write? Sometimes, picking a certain form or writing style will help — having rules and restrictions can make writing easier for some reason. Other times choosing a word, subject, or prompt and writing about it works. Sometimes you just need to come up with the right image or metaphor. If you're really stuck and don't like what you're writing, maybe you need to sit back and take a break for a while, until inspiration strikes.

Here are some ideas that you can write about:

Ideas for Writing

Inspiration From the Bible

The Bible is full of different themes, stories, and lessons, which can be turned into many, many kinds of poems. There are a bunch of different ways you could take inspiration from the Bible, ranging from writing a Bible story as a ballad / from you or a character in the story's perspective to expounding on the extent of God's love to trying to copy the tone of John's letters in a poem. Basically, you can try to copy a style from the Bible, take ideas and themes from the Bible, and/or retelling a Bible story in your own words, or any combination of the above. There's lots of possibilities, and most of my poems have their ideas taken from the Bible. This poem is a combination of all three categories:

Who Would Dare

Who would dare approach the LORD

Alone, out of his own accord?

To step into the holy place

And look upon the Father's face?

To enter through the Temple's door

To sacrifice a dove or more

Yet dare to look for cherubim

Still carrying the throne of Him

The Holy One of Abraham

Who promised him the gift of land

The One, who if our unclean eyes

Could see His holiness, we'd die

For Moses only saw His back

And ever since, he never lacked

Reflected glory on his face

That terrified the Hebrew race

Who would dare approach the LORD

Alone, out of his own accord?

To dare to brave the Maker's wrath

And not survive the aftermath?

When David took the holy ark

To Jerusalem, it left its mark

By striking down the one who touched

The ark - and scared King David much

Who, then, would dare approach the LORD

Alone, out of his own accord?

To try to know the greatest God

The One who made the earth we trod?

When Israel took the ark to war

'Twas captured, to their vast horror

The Philistines took it to Ashdod

And brought the ark to their false god

But Dagon couldn't resist the LORD

His statue broke off its own accord

It knelt before the greater God

While tumors struck the men of Ashdod

Who would dare approach the LORD

Alone, out of his own accord?

I dare, because Jesus once died

To cover my sins with one sacrifice

This poem is based around God's holiness, which is a theme running throughout the Bible, and it's written more or less in the format of some of the Psalms, where the singer sometimes exhaustively goes over Israel's history. Because it's in the recounting past history Psalm format, it describes different stories, mostly from the Old Testament.

The Beauty of Creation

Another thing that often inspires me is God's creation and how beautiful it is! Have you ever been struck by how beautiful the clouds are (and how hard they are to draw!!), especially the sunset? Have you ever seen how the humid night turns the streetlights into metal trees ringed in rainbows? Have you ever walked in the evening after rain and smelled the amazing smell of cool jungle? How about the light shining off the dewdrops on the leaves? What about the arduous challenge of climbing a rock or a mountain and the triumph you feel upon completion? Swimming in the ocean? Getting drenched in a thunderstorm? There's plenty of similes and metaphors sitting right there at your fingertips! This is a poem I wrote trying not to use any conventional metaphors:

Resplendent Dawn

The stars shine in the night sky

Ice-cold shards of broken light

Scattered far from one another

In the dark before the dawn

The clouds are rosy threads of fire

Burning songs thrown o'er the sky

Spun of molten ruby flowers

Gold poured out and flicked away

The sun comes out wrapped in glory

King of the day sits on his throne

Flowing hair and fiery robes

Ancient ruler marking time

The sea stirs its mighty waters

The sum of griefs and joys anew

Turned to burnished brass and copper

Prairie land of many hues

The king rises o'er the waters

Silver horses running before him

Upon a path of colored glass

A shifting cloth of rarest treasure

The birds sing to dawning brightness

Dazzling minstrels spinning tales

Stories rare and unimagined

Lifting to the sky above

The tide rides from the ocean

Child searching for a friend

Darting back for fear of touching

Something that will bite its hand

The land curls itself in water

Hiding from the dark and cold

Shielding all its great treasures

Keeping them in sheltered hold

The rain falls upon the waters

Prodigal son coming home to his kin

Swelling the tide of joyful reunions

Like Heaven, ne'er to part again

The sky swathes the world around us

Crystal window far beyond

Bowl protecting turned around us

Colored scarf to warm our earth

The sun sets o'ertop the mountains

Returning where he once began

The golden king bows to another

Casting crowns before the Throne

Longing For Heaven

Something else I like to write about is Heaven and wanting to go there. This world is so broken and corrupted by sin, and we get tired of how messed up it is, so I look forward to Heaven, when all wrongs are made right and all things are made new by, in, and for Jesus!

You could write about Heaven itself, or focus more on the longing aspect. You could focus on the journey or the destination, or a given character's feelings at finally getting to Heaven. You could stick close to the Bible and only use the descriptions it gives, or you could imagine your own. You could focus on why we can be in Heaven (Jesus and Jesus' sacrifice on the cross! Grace, faith, hope, love...), or describe the joy and feasting we'll have when we get there. There's lots of possibilities!

We looked at this one before, but here it is again:

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

I wrote this poem exclusively using descriptions from the Bible, nearly entirely the final two chapters of Revelation. In that way, this also falls under inspiration from the Bible category as well, but a lot of my poems do. (Fun fact: I also wrote this poem while I was in quarantine last November.)

Poems About God

God is great and worthy to be praised, and one way we can do that is write poems. Poems expressing God's character and love, poems worshipping and thanking God for who He is, and poems praising what God has done... It's just like writing musicless songs. Worship or praise poems can be a personal conversation between you and God, a journal entry written in verse, and / or they can be addressed to other people as an exhortation to praise God, a declaration of how good God is.

Take this poem, telling the Gospel:

The Single Hope

The day was black, as black as night

When sinful man took our one light

The single hope that we could see

And nailed Him to a broken tree

Creation moaned and shied away

Cracking ground and shrouding day

It couldn't bear to see its Maker

Hung up helpless for the traitors

Thunder boomed and lightning crashed

Darkness fell and hope was dashed

Torn apart by His last cry:

"It is finished!" Then He died.

Limp upon the broken tree

Stabbed for surety, killed by me

The single man that could have saved us

We repaid Him with hateful thrust

Taken down with love to mourn

Wrapped with reverence, no more thorns

Carried to an empty tomb

A parting gift to the consumed

Sealed and guarded, scorned in death

Yet He forgave with dying breath

The very ones who nailed Him there

Who tortured Him and stripped Him bare

Then on the third, at break of dawn

The seal was broken, body gone

The guards fell down in fear, like dead

Death now defeated, gone instead

"He's alive!" the angel said

Overwhelmed with joy, they fled

Disciples ran to see the tomb

Empty now, no more man's doom

God's miracle calls through the ages

His death and resurrection saved us

No longer fear the sting of death

With life fore'er past our last breath

God's love for us is amazing! We should never get tired of singing or talking or writing about it!

(I borrowed the first line of the seventh stanza from O Praise The Name (Anástasis))

Closing Thoughts

Poetry, like other forms of writing and art, has its own various rules, conventions, and forms. We've talked about the mechanics of poetry, how poems are often structured, the gritty stuff of poetry, how to convey emotions and make a point in your story, the different kinds of poems you can write, and finally some ideas for inspiration.

But, just like everything else we do, at the end of the day it comes down to why we write our poems. "So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God" (1 Cor 10:31). "Whatever you do" includes poetry. Whatever poems we write, they should be for the glory of God, whether we are taking inspiration from the Bible, praising His name, longing for heaven, writing about the beauty of creation, writing poems of lament, telling a story, or anything else.

May God bless you in your poetry writing. To God be the glory!