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!

Secrets of Poetry part 3

Hello again! This is the third part of the Secrets of Poetry. Since we have already looked at the mechanics of poetry and the gritty stuff, now we will move on from how to write poems to exploring some of the different kinds of poems we can write.

Types of Poems

Free Verse

Depending on how you look at it, free verse can be the easiest and hardest kind of poem right. The definition of free verse is that there are no particular rules, either for rhyme, meter, stanza, or subject. Of course, this makes identifying free verse a lot harder, as some free verse poems can look very similar to normal prose broken up and worded poetically (which, you could argue, is exactly what it is). I personally like more structured poems compared to free verse because they have a tendency to sound better and are easier to read out loud (this is because meter makes it a lot easier to perform poems, and rhyme makes it sound nice). However, that hasn't stopped me from accidentally writing plenty of free verse poems, and when you don't have a pattern in rhyme or meter, you could have subtler patterns in the subject of your poems instead. Take this one:

One Small Moment

One small moment

It changed everything

Dragged before them all

Accused and condemned in one fell moment

Destined to die

One small moment

It changed everything

Shown up as my true self

While my lover walks away unfettered

Deepest injustice

One small moment

It changed everything

All masks stripped away

Everyone shown in a clear, cold light

Driven by hate

One small moment

It changed everything

I'm just a pawn to them

An excuse to defame the great teacher

Despised guilty

One small moment

It changed everything

There in the spotlight

Accusations made, verdict awaited

Deny nothing

One small moment

It changed everything

Words in the dust

"Throw the stone if you are sinless"

Daring to hope

One small moment

It changed everything

Mercy extended

"I don't condemn you. Go and sin no more"

Delivered forever

One Small Moment is a poem based on John 8:1-11, which is the story about the woman caught in adultery who was taken before Jesus. The Pharisees and teachers of the law wanted to know whether Jesus advocated to stone the woman, and he didn't answer but bent down and wrote on the ground. When they pressed him, he told them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” And then, one by one, they all left, and Jesus told the woman he didn't condemn her and commanded her to “Go and leave your life of sin.”

Despite this being a free verse poem, I still had a lot of fun hiding different patterns within the poem. Each stanza has five lines, in the first two lines are always the same. The fourth line almost always has 10 syllables, and the fifth line always starts with a word that starts with D. The last line usually has only two words, which usually add up to four syllables. But, since this is a free verse poem, there are plenty of exceptions.

Of course, this is only one example of free verse, and free verse can go just about anywhere because of its lack of structure, so feel free to experiment.

Sonnets

Sonnets! Sonnets are my personal favorite kind of poem, because I like the rigidity of their structure, and the sonnets I write almost always turn out well. It's also probably one of the more famous kinds of poem, since Shakespeare wrote many sonnets. He also wrote all of his plays (minus a couple passages) in blank verse, which has a similar structure (iambic pentameter, though with no line limit or rhyme). Sonnets are poems 14 lines long, each consisting of iambic pentameter and with the rhyme scheme ABABCDCDEFEFGG. I find it helpful to mentally break up the lines into four stanzas: 3 four-line stanzas with an ABAB rhyme scheme each, and a final couplet stanza that rhymes. Sounds too crazy? Let's look at an example:

Israelites In the Desert

How long, we grumble, must we eat this mess?

Of manna we are sick and long for meat

If truly we're the people God has blessed

Then surely He'll fulfill our yawning need

O Moses, what direction are we going?

Or must we languish here another day?

At least in Egypt cooling wind was blowing

Where is this promised land we're meant to stay?

A burst of light erupting from the sky

A flaming witness to the higher call

The answer given by the Lord Most High

The promise He will still not let us fall

Repent, O Israel, for we are wrong

To doubt the Lord our God's right hand is strong

It doesn't look quite as intimidating written out, does it? The thing about iambic pentameter is that it's actually quite an easy meter to use, since we speak in imperfect iambic meter a lot of the time. Also, depending on how stricter being with the sonnet form, you do have a little wiggle room, especially at the beginning of a line. The rhyme is also pretty easy to work with, because in my experience when we write rhyming poems, we use ABAB rhyming a lot.

The final couplet breaks the ABAB pattern by rhyming with itself, and it provides a sense of completion. In this case, it's Israel telling itself to repent because God was right after all. Too bad they start complaining again soon!

If you find the idea of a super-structured poem daunting, I'd encourage you to try it, because I find working within limits actually boosts my creativity rather than hampers it. If you don't want to try sonnet, you can try other structured poems instead.

Shape Poems

Breaking away from using rhyme and meter as the structure, now we look at syllables and words. Shape poems are poems that don't have to rhyme, but instead limit the amount of syllables or words per line to create a shape. Some shape poems count the words, and some count the syllables. There are many possible variations of shape poems, whether you have an increasing amount of words per line, or each stanza has so many syllables.

Lost

Lost

Willing wayward

Choosing selfish pathways

Delighting in the world

Morals chosen from hand-picked truth

Hurting others in favor of self

But none of this leads to satisfaction

What point is there in this twisted way?

Going searching for an adequate answer, finding only bondage

But a voice cries: "One Way, One Truth, One Life!"

The difference from all the others is this: He died.

The skeptics say you must give up freedom

Freedom's never free; you're always serving something

Choose a good Master who cares

Choose a loving Savior

Choose the Resurrection

Choose God

Jesus

This poem, Lost, focuses on words instead of syllables. It starts with one word on the first line and adds one subsequent word all the way until it reaches ten ("But a voice cries: 'One Way, one Truth, One Life!"), then takes it all away one word at a time until you reach one again. The message and story of this poem also reflects this change from being lost to found; the first half of the poem describes being lost, and the second half describes being found.

Another way you could make a shape poem is to do something like this:

A Walk by the Sea

Walking

The cliffs

Nowhere in sight

Wondering

Deep questions

Doubting my safety

Foggy

Mist-shrouded

Cold, damp, grey

Waves

Lapping, sighing

Sounds in the silence

Sandy

Seashore texture

Under my feet

Soundless

But not

Everything is muffled

Alone

Yet not

God is with me

Light

Piercing through

The lighthouse beacon

Foghorn

Sounding warnings

To sailing ships

Direction

Lost, found

Guided to home

Home

Safety, security

Warm voice welcome

Each stanza moves from one word to three, rather than one pattern over the whole poem. There's two exceptions, but shape poems are not a very strict form and one or two deviations are okay if you like. Other shape things you could do involve increasing your words / syllables by a specific pattern (even numbers, odd numbers, a mathematical formula if you so desire!), choosing your words so that they actually do make a shape (because words vary in length and tend to ruin the effect), experimenting with words and syllables, and many more! There's lots of permutations to try, as well as adding in more patterns and / or restrictions of your own!

Acrostics

Acrostics are a really ancient kind of poem — even some of the Psalms (like 119 and 145) are acrostic poems! The beginning letter of each successive line spells out a word, phrase, or even the alphabet. Acrostic poems are relatively easy to make, since the only requirement is that the beginning letters spell something, and the stanza are usually (but not always) broken up into words. Like other poems, though, you are totally allowed to add your own rhyme, meter, or other patterns to it as well.

Running Home

Rueful regrets

Undermine my confidence

Not wealthy

Not happy

I am

Now

Going back

Home

Once

More

Entering forgiveness

This poem is actually the original inspiration for my song Running Home. Me, Jasmin, and a friend were writing poems over church lunch. When we wrote acrostics, I decided on the words 'Running Home'. When we finished and read our poems out to each other, I thought of a tune and chorus that could go with my poem, and voila, Running Home was born. The original acrostic became verse one and the pre chorus. (Fun fact: the second verse of Running Home is also an imperfect Running Home acrostic.)

Question & Answer Poems

Question-and-answer as a literary device actually pops up in several places, including songwriting, music (some musical phrases are "questions" with their subsequent "answers"), and even poems. Basically, a question and answer poem asks a question (or questions) and then answers it. Because of the way questions and answers work, question and answer poems can easily become dialogue poems (where two or more people take turns speaking).

Questions From A Six-Year Old

Where is the space between sea and the sky?

Does it reach forever to kiss heavens high?

Why doesn't it come to me when I must hide?

Where is the space between sea and the sky?

There is the line between Heaven and Earth

Stretching its arms around our world's great girth

No need to hide, child, for I know your worth

Horizon, the line now gone bordering Earth

Why won't the moonlight come over the rise?

How come King Solomon dreampt, and was wise?

Will anyone see me if I close my eyes?

Why won't the starlight come over the rise?

Hills cast the shadows that make the sky dark

God gave him wisdom, and now it's his mark

I still see you outlined in firelight sparks

The hill blocks the starlight and makes it seem dark

How does the mommy bird hatch her white eggs?

Why was I made with two long skinny legs?

When God made creation, did He make my pegs?

How does the mommy bird hatch her white eggs?

The mother bird may be a stork or a lark

Your legs aren't skinny, they're thick like tree bark

When God made the world, He made wood for your pegs

The mommy bird hatches by sitting on eggs

While question-and-answer poems generally tend to ask the question and then immediately answer it, this poem alternates stanzas instead of lines. It's also a dialogue poem, because the child asks questions in one stanza and then the mother answers in the next. Pretty simple to understand, right?

Other Kinds of Poems

Of course, these are not the only kinds of poems out there. From strictly structured poems to those with only one or two restrictions, there's many different styles to choose. Some of the ones I haven't mentioned include:

Sestinas, a complex kind of poem where each stanza ends with one of six words. There's a rigid order to the end words for each stanza (Stanza one: etc.), but other than that you're free to choose. However, making sense while sticking to the same six end words is harder than you might think!

Haikus, which are rigidly structured short poems based on syllable count. The first line is five syllables, the second seven, and the third five again. Haikus usually have some reference to nature within them.

Epics and ballads, which are generally longer poems telling an extended story. They may or may not be set to music, and they will probably have some form of consistent rhyme or meter to make their story easier to tell. Since ballads used to be the way to tell a story / preserve history without writing, it was important that they were memorable.

Limericks, those five-line funny little poems that are one stanza long and have an AABBA rhyme scheme. They're easy to remember because of their rhyme (and usually their meter too) and should be fairly easy to make.

All those other poems that you know have a specific structure but you don't know the name of it! I have a lot of these poems because I don't start with a structure in mind but then a rhyme scheme and meter appears.

Well, that's it for this post. The fourth and final post in this series, giving different suggestions for inspiration writing poems, will be coming soon!

A Bird and A Birthday

 

On the way back from an evening walk, the kids found a baby sparrow that had fallen out of its nest in the upstairs hallway. They made it a shoebox nest, gave it a few things to eat, and left it in our hallway. it was still there in the morning, and Aiden particularly enjoyed caring for it. It let him hold it way more than the rest of us thought possible for a wild bird. All that day there were increasing amounts of twittering in the hallway as worried parents found the nestling. But it wasn't until the next day that they all discovered a way to get their baby back home: an incredibly loud twitter fest all morning long and then silence and an empty box!

Aiden's 9th birthday was yesterday. Quiet, as we're under a strict lockdown, but a good day of celebration with a blueberry pancake breakfast, no school work, no computer time limits, a riddling treasure hunt from Grace, and the requested spaghetti supper and castle cake.

 The two day-of presents were another challenge of a rubix cube and a phone of his own. Not too sure we needed yet another device in the house, but this hopefully replaces rather than adds devices! Its story is unusual also: In trying to buy Grace her phone, we ended up with a lemon of a phone that wouldn't take a sim card.  In requesting a return, the money was refunded but no way was given to return the phone, even after a few attempts. As Aiden doesn't actually need a working phone, this works for us.

And this also must be marked: 

Dad actually bought Mom a birthday present! It was late. We all enjoyed the name but Mom isn't sharing the contents...

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!