Writing poetry
Wed, 2005-12-07 00:33
#1
Writing poetry
HI I'm new and in the past three days I have begun to write poetry. Now I'm not going to ask you to tell me what u think of my stories, I'd like it if u did but I'm no asking for it. I just want to know if anyone here can give me some tips on how to improve writing it. Thanks so much for all the kindness everyone's shown me over the past few days.
archergirl
I replied yesterday but for some reason it didn't show up. I'll try again.
There's not one way to write poetry, but there are a couple of guidelines to making it effective.
1. The idea should be -shown-, not -told- (this applies across the creative writing genre, anyhow)
2. The idea should be condensed somehow - there are some fine poets on this site; read through their works (spack, span, and stormy_petrel [can I mention some of ritawrites' work without too many howls of protest?] among many many others) write very well in this format.
I'm sure the others can add to this. The use of imagery is vital, even with abstract concepts like emotional pain or 'happiness'.
Read various styles of poetry to see what you like. Poetry styles come in and go out of fashion, but that doesn't mean they're any less good. My favourite poet is William Carlos Williams, who is waaay out of fashion now, but I love him; he does fantastic, long, rambling epics full of rich language.
Hope this helps! -AG