Tips For Writing a Good Poem, according to English Academic Professors and Sources

[linux.poet]

This is so I don't repeat myself when writing reviews of people's poetry on yonder forum overmuch. Yours truly has been to college for English writing and actually has published 4 poems. Checketh the username also. Yo? I love poetry.

If you're just writing poems for fun, you may feel free to ignore me, but if you genuinely want to improve your writing, read on and profit.

1. Do not capitalize the first letter of every line in your poem. Just because Microsoft Word does it automatically, that doesn't mean it's a good idea. It makes you look lazy and an incompetent poet. Only capitalize:

-The first letter of each sentence
-Proper names
-Words you want to emphasize.

2. Unless you are using a traditional form such as a sonnet, haiku, haibun, or limerick, the best poems do not rhyme. Rhyming makes your poem seem silly and trite; the best poems have sonic variety for each of the lines, and that includes the line endings. More importantly, you need to pick the words that best convey your ideas and your points. Using a rhyme scheme encourages you to blunt that in favor of finding soundalike words.

Poetry is about picking the right words, spacing, literary devices, capitalization and punctuation, sounds, and meter and rhythm to convey an emotional experience. If you must use a rhyme scheme, change it up every so often. Don't fall into the abab cdcd efef or aabb ccdd eeff rhyme scheme for your whole poem. Change the scheme to emphasize an important point or to lead your reader into a new feeling.

3. Use a variety of poetic meters. Don't fall into a sing-song rhythm - that's a song, not a poem.

There was a kid named Jill,
She went right up the hill,
At the top she left a mess,
Cleanup led to her death.

This stanza is not very effective. Let's try something that makes us look like a pro.

There was a kid
Jill

up the hill​

she went right
at the top
a mess
she left
led to
her death

Meter is one of the best ways to convey emotion in a poem. Long lines convey fear, especially if you drop the spaces between words. Staccato lines are for sad and depressing poems like this one. Happiness and contentment are conveyed by slowing down the tempo, dropping the sense of urgency and letting us sink into the moment. Anger is conveyed through capital letters for emphasis and/or italics.

4. Poetry is a highly flexible form of language. Don't be afraid to change things up and experiment with different versions of the same poem.

Honestly, you're not going to know whether putting the main point of your poem in the middle of it in all caps with two periods on each side is going to work until you try it. The first draft of your poem should just be you getting your ideas out of your head in whatever form they take, and then go ahead experimenting with as many meter adjustments, punctuation ideas, and words until your points and the emotion behind them is conveyed clearly to your intended audience. Save different experiments as different Microsoft Word (or Libre Office Writer) documents. That way you have them all and can select the best one.

5. Cut unnecessary words and phrases that aren't necessary to convey the point of the poem, the main emotional truth you want the audience to walk away with. Use the absolute minimum words needed.

Poetry is not a place to muddy the waters by talking about more than one rhetorical point in one poem or including multiple emotions for the sake of including them. If you have more than one point to convey, divide your current poem into two or three or however many poems so your poem's points are easily understandable as one whole.

I may add more to this topic as I look through my old college notes and read through poems others have written here in yonder forum, but that's what I remember from college. I hope this is helpful to you. Go forth and be published, honored friends here.

 

[The Liturgist]

This is so I don't repeat myself when writing reviews of people's poetry on yonder forum overmuch. Yours truly has been to college for English writing and actually has published 4 poems. Checketh the username also. Yo? I love poetry.

If you're just writing poems for fun, you may feel free to ignore me, but if you genuinely want to improve your writing, read on and profit.

1. Do not capitalize the first letter of every line in your poem. Just because Microsoft Word does it automatically, that doesn't mean it's a good idea. It makes you look lazy and an incompetent poet. Only capitalize:

-The first letter of each sentence
-Proper names
-Words you want to emphasize.

2. Unless you are using a traditional form such as a sonnet, haiku, haibun, or limerick, the best poems do not rhyme. Rhyming makes your poem seem silly and trite; the best poems have sonic variety for each of the lines, and that includes the line endings. More importantly, you need to pick the words that best convey your ideas and your points. Using a rhyme scheme encourages you to blunt that in favor of finding soundalike words.

Poetry is about picking the right words, spacing, literary devices, capitalization and punctuation, sounds, and meter and rhythm to convey an emotional experience. If you must use a rhyme scheme, change it up every so often. Don't fall into the abab cdcd efef or aabb ccdd eeff rhyme scheme for your whole poem. Change the scheme to emphasize an important point or to lead your reader into a new feeling.

3. Use a variety of poetic meters. Don't fall into a sing-song rhythm - that's a song, not a poem.



This stanza is not very effective. Let's try something that makes us look like a pro.



Meter is one of the best ways to convey emotion in a poem. Long lines convey fear, especially if you drop the spaces between words. Staccato lines are for sad and depressing poems like this one. Happiness and contentment are conveyed by slowing down the tempo, dropping the sense of urgency and letting us sink into the moment. Anger is conveyed through capital letters for emphasis and/or italics.

4. Poetry is a highly flexible form of language. Don't be afraid to change things up and experiment with different versions of the same poem.

Honestly, you're not going to know whether putting the main point of your poem in the middle of it in all caps with two periods on each side is going to work until you try it. The first draft of your poem should just be you getting your ideas out of your head in whatever form they take, and then go ahead experimenting with as many meter adjustments, punctuation ideas, and words until your points and the emotion behind them is conveyed clearly to your intended audience. Save different experiments as different Microsoft Word (or Libre Office Writer) documents. That way you have them all and can select the best one.

5. Cut unnecessary words and phrases that aren't necessary to convey the point of the poem, the main emotional truth you want the audience to walk away with. Use the absolute minimum words needed.

Poetry is not a place to muddy the waters by talking about more than one rhetorical point in one poem or including multiple emotions for the sake of including them. If you have more than one point to convey, divide your current poem into two or three or however many poems so your poem's points are easily understandable as one whole.

I may add more to this topic as I look through my old college notes and read through poems others have written here in yonder forum, but that's what I remember from college. I hope this is helpful to you. Go forth and be published, honored friends here.

What do you think of acrostics? They are very common in a type of Eastern Orthodox hymn called a canon (although unfortunately since most of these were originally written in Greek the acrostics are invisible in English).

Also, since you are like me a Linux user*, have you used vi/vim or emacs for writing poetry? i believe emacs has special modes to aid in writing poetry, but I have never had the time to learn it; my first mentor taught me vim and once you get used to one of the great UNIX text editors it is difficult to switch to another (and increasingly most young people I know aren’t even bothering, but are just using nano, which I find sad, since if you do learn one of the classic text editors it does provide for amazing productivity).

*I also develop on legacy UNIX like IBM AIX, Solaris, as well as other open source UNIX like OSes, particularly FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD and Illumos (which is a fork of OpenSolaris), and especially real time UNIX like operating systems such as QNX and Wind River,

 

[linux.poet]

What do you think of acrostics? They are very common in a type of Eastern Orthodox hymn called a canon (although unfortunately since most of these were originally written in Greek the acrostics are invisible in English).

I think those could be played with as a style in English, but unless you did a really artistic job of stylizing it for shock value the secular literary journals probably won’t publish it. Greek poetry actually might get published somewhere, but most journals will want an English translation of said Greek.

I do want to start a Christian literary journal at some point, as the current Christian journals don’t strike me as being very effective. (One of them had the gall to expect me to pay them to submit my poem to them! No thanks.) When that happens, I definitely would want to allow traditional Catholic and Orthodox forms of poetry for submission. I will need all the submissions I can get my hands on and will be in no position to turn people away based on denomination.

have you used vi/vim or emacs for writing poetry? i believe emacs has special modes to aid in writing poetry, but I have never had the time to learn it;

No lol. Libre Office Writer is actually better because it creates files that can be easily submitted for publication.

About the only reason you would use something like Vim is if you were looking to straight web develop a poetry website and you didn’t care about publication at all, because it allows for speed. I have some misgivings about that; if you don’t have advertising rigged up and a good promotion or sales plan for your site it feels like throwing money or credibility away. If you submit it to another journal, it might get published, and then you move up the poetry ladder.

That ladder would be: individual poem publications —-> publishing of poetry collections (books) —> public poetry readings —-> bigger and bigger reading events —> getting to read poetry at a Presidential Inauguration. All of which makes no money unless you self-publish the collections and do reading YouTube videos, but it makes one look cool, and it’s hard to turn down the prestige .

 

[linux.poet]

UPDATE:

File this under the “there are exceptions to every rule” section:

What’s Writing Classical Poetry All About? | Society of Classical Poets

classicalpoets.org

Writing Classical Poetry Is Easy (at Least to Begin With) | Society of Classical Poets

classicalpoets.org

Yes, there is an entire poetic organization dedicated to defending sing song rhyme schemes. I found this during a dispute with another member in critique when they claimed that they were writing “classical poetry”. (And yes, the Road Not Taken by Frost is a classical poem, so they may have some degree of a point. At the very least, I must concede it is disputed.)

My (sanguine) defense is that most people who are writing classical poetry don’t know that they are, and would benefit from moving away from such ideas.

Also: most famous poems are not classical as this organization defines it. Consider William Bulter Yeats “The Second Coming”: The Second Coming Was that written in a sing song rhyme scheme?

At the very least, if you’re going to write a classical poem, I would encourage one to do so deliberately and not out of laziness. But recognize it will not be so easily published these days.

 

[The Liturgist]

About the only reason you would use something like Vim is if you were looking to straight web develop a poetry website and you didn’t care about publication at all, because it allows for speed. I

Or if you wanted to mark it up using LaTeX, which does particularly lovely text formatting and which can prepare press-ready documents using its built-in macros (which otherwise, while you don’t need Adobe InDesign to do it, it definitely helps with print design and is probably the most capable WYSIWYG print design program). Of course Word and LibreOffice will turn out PDFs, although in my experience LibreOffice and Word do typography in a very … bland way - but perhaps LibreOffice has developed greatly since I last used it. But ideally you want, at least, full control over kerning, leading etc, and I would think for print poetry this would be particularly important so you could control to an intimate degree the appearance of the text on the page. Particularly if one is doing a poem that involves typographical curiosities, such as a serpentine line of text (if I recall there is one in Alice In Wonderland).

Also at Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion there was a pet cemetary in the queue area, which was probably removed in the recent refurbishment, which featured this, which I find to be hysterically funny (as a serious poet, you might object and I would be sympathetic towards such objections since on a certain level such things are contrived, but in a childlike way I just can’t help but be amused by this):

 

[The Liturgist]

When that happens, I definitely would want to allow traditional Catholic and Orthodox forms of poetry for submission.

Would you be interested in new translations of previously unpublished (in English) ancient poetry (technically hymns) such as the famed metrical homilies, hymns and canons of St. Ephraim the Syrian, St. Jacob of Sarugh, St. Romanos the Melodist and other noted early hymnographers whose work is not well known in the West? There is quite a lot of material, particularly from the Syriac, Armenian and Ethiopian churches whose beauty is matched only by its obscurity.

 

[linux.poet]

Or if you wanted to mark it up using LaTeX, which does particularly lovely text formatting and which can prepare press-ready documents using its built-in macros (which otherwise, while you don’t need Adobe InDesign to do it, it definitely helps with print design and is probably the most capable WYSIWYG print design program).

Ah, yes. That would be optimal for inexpensive poetry collection self-publishing or literary journal operations, without having to pay Adobe.

Would you be interested in new translations of previously unpublished (in English) ancient poetry (technically hymns) such as the famed metrical homilies, hymns and canons of St. Ephraim the Syrian, St. Jacob of Sarugh, St. Romanos the Melodist and other noted early hymnographers whose work is not well known in the West? There is quite a lot of material, particularly from the Syriac, Armenian and Ethiopian churches whose beauty is matched only by its obscurity.

I would, but I think the best option to honor it is actually to put it in its own collection or collections and publish the translations it as its own work. You've kind of answered your own question - you'd want to translate it in using Emacs or Vim rapid-fire and then mark it up using LaTeX.

However, for formal poetry translations, you'll want to include the original to honor it. When you translate poetry from one language to another, part of the meaning is lost because the beautiful patterns of one language just aren't the same in another. What rhymes in Spanish doesn't rhyme in English, for example. So if the original is an acrostic, the English readers won't be able to understand the words of the original, but they will be able to see the letters on the side of the poem that you can then tell them what it is.

I'm pretty sure you can do a keyboard remap to type Greek in, but the better course might be to scan the originals in as images, park them in LaTeX and leave them that way because Ancient Greek is not the same as modern Greek letters and you don't want to waste time redrawing a new font if you can avoid it.

But that's the technical aspect. The harder part will getting academic or Church credibility for your translation. Obviously, just making this available for PDF is free, and getting copies to hand out at church or events would be like $1000 for offset printing and much less for Print-On-Demand. However, if this is a new-in-English translation for these poems, you might want to actually try traditionally publishing it. The academics and theologians (including myself) will definitely be interested and have much to say, and professors and students pay significant amounts for good translations of relevant works. That might be enough to convince one of the Big 5 to go for it.

It's all up to you, but if I were sitting on a bunch of untranslated poetry with theological relevance and I had the ability to translate it fairly accurately, I would compile it, translate it, and send it off to get that thing published. No point in throwing away good money. But that's just me.

 

[The Liturgist]

I'm pretty sure you can do a keyboard remap to type Greek in, but the better course might be to scan the originals in as images, park them in LaTeX and leave them that way because Ancient Greek is not the same as modern Greek letters and you don't want to waste time redrawing a new font if you can avoid it.

Indeed, we have the original Greek and Syriac text in digitized format, which for most of these is actually Byzantine miniscule and Estrangela (a system of Aramaic calligraphy used in the Syriac language), and Classical Armenian and Ge’ez, and preserving this faithfully is highly desirable. In some cases, since we have very ancient manuscripts which are somewhat illuminated (sometimes highly illuminated, but usually, just light decoration, as you can see for instance in this collection of Syriac Orthodox Eucharistic prayers (which in this case are written in a mixture of Estrangela and later West Syriac script) and in some cases this is sufficiently beautiful where it might be desirable, if possible given the constraints related to printing expenses.

 

[The Liturgist]

It's all up to you, but if I were sitting on a bunch of untranslated poetry with theological relevance and I had the ability to translate it fairly accurately, I would compile it, translate it, and send it off to get that thing published. No point in throwing away good money. But that's just me.

I agree to a very large extent with this sentiment. However, there is an exception applicable in this case, for the fact that much of this material is of immediate use both to cradle Orthodox who only speak English or Arabic with English as a secondary language*, and to recent English speaking Oriental Orthodox Christians**, and the benefits of making it available to the faithful outweigh any monetary considerations for my part. Of course, the version made available to the faithful might in several cases be a simplified translation so that people who speak English as a second language might be able to use it, as opposed to a more accurate translation (for instance, a lot of context is lost if one translates this material without using the second personal pronouns such as Thou, Thee, Thine, etc, but there is a desire among the bishops of some of the churches missing this material to use very simple contemporary English for the reasons stated above, which results in a reduction in accuracy and to some extent of liturgical elegance and precision, although there are some contemporary English liturgical texts and editions of the Bible whose literary style I find very pleasing (for example, the old second edition of the NIV I thought was very elegant in terms of literary style). But at any rate, my first priority has to be the needs of the faithful, but in some cases, one can do a better translation that is less useful in church, and that version might be more worth publishing for financial reasons.

* The Syriac Orthodox and Coptic Orthodox are actively trying to phase out the Arabic language, especially in the diaspora, as it was forced on them by the Muslims, and since only a portion of their liturgy exists in both English, Arabic and the original Syriac and Coptic languages, it is constraining, particularly in the case of the Syriac Orthodox where to my knowledge only four of the eighty six anaphorae (Eucharistic prayers) exist in all three languages; the Armenians and Ethiopians on the other hand primarily worship in Classical Armenian and Ge’ez, so this is less of an issue for them on the one hand, but on the other, converts have even less access to vernacular translations of their liturgy.

** The vast majority of the Eastern Orthodox liturgy (and for that matter, most of the Coptic Orthodox (Oriental Orthodox) liturgy) is now available in English, including the text of all currently used sacramental services and all proper hymns and most devotional hymns anyone is likely to encounter in the parish, the exceptions being a small number of ancient hymns such as Kontakia which fell out of use in favor of Canons, and older liturgical forms which stopped being used around the time Constantinople was invaded in the Fourth Crusade at the instigation of Venice in 1204 (which, even though the Venetians eventually withdrew, weakened the Byzantine Empire to the point that conquest by the Turks became more or less inevitable), such as the magnificent Cathedral services used at the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople and at the principle churches in Athens and Thessaloniki, which survives in Greek manuscript form and has been reassembled and performed in recent years by the Greek Orthodox musicologist Dr. Alexander Lingas, and his celebrated choir, Capella Romana.

Also, we do not have a complete set of all extant devotional hymns such as Akathists, and some of the services, including older liturgical forms, of nationalities where there are not a lot of English speaking converts, for instance, Georgians, and the Russian Old Rite Orthodox, specifically those groups which have been out of communion with the main Russian church since the regrettable persecutions initiated by Czar Peter I (who illegally seized control of the church for political purposes, as the Soviets would later do), such as the Lipovans, who fled to Romania in the early 18th century and have lived there ever since, and are indeed members of the Romanian Orthodox Church, but whose liturgical uses are unknown in the West, where the only Russian Old Rite material we have comes from a former “Old Believer” church in Pennsylvania that rejoined the canonical church in the late 1970s.***

Much of this material is of interest to the many Eastern Orthodox who only speak English, for example, that of the Lipovans in Romania, who represent a group of Old Rite Orthodox whose canonical status is uninterrupted. There are also old liturgical manuscripts such as Codex Barberini 336, which contain older recensions of liturgies still in use, with a number of beautiful prayers and other material that has become unfortunately both obscure and inaccessible. The untranslated portions of the Coptic Orthodox liturgy are largely as I have described above. On the other hand, the other three Oriental Orthodox liturgies (Syriac, Armenian and Ethiopian and Eritrean) are not well translated, with just enough Syriac Orthodox material to be usable, and less than sufficient amounts of Armenian and especially Ethiopian/Eritrean.

*** The aforesaid parish that rejoined the mainstream church in the 1970s is the Church of the Nativity in Erie, PA, which had been affiliated with one of several sects that do not celebrate Holy Communion or the other sacraments except for baptism and holy matrimony, since they believed all legitimate bishops had been killed off by Czar Peter I, even those in other countries, and thus believe they have no priests in apostolic succession who are capable of celebrating the sacraments (although they do have clergy in the form of rectors who preach and led the congregation in worship, and it was one such cleric who led that church back into the canonical one. There are a large number of churches still out of communion with the mainstream church iin Woodburn, PA.

 

[linux.poet]

Indeed, we have the original Greek and Syriac text in digitized format, which for most of these is actually Byzantine miniscule and Estrangela (a system of Aramaic calligraphy used in the Syriac language), and Classical Armenian and Ge’ez, and preserving this faithfully is highly desirable. In some cases, since we have very ancient manuscripts which are somewhat illuminated (sometimes highly illuminated, but usually, just light decoration, as you can see for instance in this collection of Syriac Orthodox Eucharistic prayers (which in this case are written in a mixture of Estrangela and later West Syriac script) and in some cases this is sufficiently beautiful where it might be desirable, if possible given the constraints related to printing expenses.

Wow! That is valuable indeed and should be treated with respect. I'm not going to casually publish that in a literary journal alongside contemporary poems. As you've mentioned in the next post, these poems are likely holy or at least valuable to groups of Orthodox Christians, and I'm not interested in offending said groups in the name of scholarly interest or profit.

One of the foremost criticisms of academics, particularly literary academics, is that we show disrespect to source materials and treat the people who wrote them with disrespect. I'm definitely not interested in continuing that trend, especially as regards poetry and art, which I believe should be respected as to its intentions. Better to sit in admiration and appropriate reverence than let the scholars do violence to the whole.

While non-denominational Protestant scholarly intentions may be kinder than our secular counterparts, we also have a single-minded dedication to absolute truth and getting said absolute truth in the hands of as many people as possible which can come at the expense of artistic admiration or holy reverence. It allows us to deeply appreciate God's omniscience throughout history and offer much in the way of practical advice but it feeds criticism of what we should just respect and admire and appreciate.

I agree to a very large extent with this sentiment. However, there is an exception applicable in this case, for the fact that much of this material is of immediate use both to cradle Orthodox who only speak English or Arabic with English as a secondary language*, and to recent English speaking Oriental Orthodox Christians**, and the benefits of making it available to the faithful outweigh any monetary considerations for my part.

I agree. In ministry, taking care of the Body of Christ is the most important.

To some degree, I think the denominations are mindsets that get deeply embedded into us. What is valuable to Non-denominational christians is the Scripture, and in the name of truth and profit, we've made it almost pedestrian with all of the Bibles and study Bibles we have printed in our quest for accurate Scripture interpretation and application to daily life, how churches should be run, etc. My previous remark probably reflects that culture more than anything. Not to mention the fact that I have taken multiple college classes in ancient medieval literature as part of my degree to avoid examining pop culture drivel from the modern era, and thus I cannot blink away the value of illuminated amphoras or codices. They are very valuable to that field, especially translated.

But, it is more important to serve these Orthodox Christian groups as you have mentioned without subjecting them to publishing delays or academic intrusion from the outside. They are not academic research subjects; they are people, and should be treated as such.

Sorry, I may have gone too far the other direction, but I do believe that the first translation should respect the church's needs over pesky scholarly concerns, as those are far secondary by comparison. If a scholarly translation is to be done, it should be done in respect to these Orthodox groups, not without their input or permission. Otherwise that's kind of rude.

 

[jacks]

I'm sure you didn't mean your list were hard and fast rules. Rather suggestions for a budding poet? Otherwise I will have to reexamine one of my favorites below:

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
By William Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

 

[The Liturgist]

I'm not going to casually publish that in a literary journal alongside contemporary poems.

I can assure you that, in fact, with regards to many of the ancient hymns, as well as new hymns composed to commemorate recent martyrs in the Middle East, the Orthodox would not regard publication of some of the material I mentioned in a Christian literary journal, indeed, it would be appreciated if it were done in a respectful manner, for bringing to light what is presently an unfortunately and undeservedly obscure source of poetry and hymnody.

And indeed Protestants have on occasion adopted some of the more well known Orthodox hymns such as Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silent, and O Gladsome Light (Phos Hilarion) and also used some melodies by Orthodox composers, just as many Protestant hymns like “Angels We Have Heard on High” incorporate elements of traditionally Catholic hymns. The difference of course is that the beauty of these Eastern hymns is unfortunately obscure.

So I don’t mind people making money off of it, even; as a liturgist who compiles liturgical text I work mainly in the public domain, but it is the case that most English translations of our material have been for-profit translations that are copyrighted and generate income for various publishing houses (such as St. John of Kronstadt Press in the case of Church Slavonic and Eastern Orthodox material and Gormidas Press, whose owner’s sister is a friend of mine, in the case of Syriac Orthodox material, while the breakthrough that made nearly all of the Coptic Orthodox liturgy availalble to English speakers was done by the developers of the Coptic Reader app, which is availalble for free on iTunes and Google Play, but the free version has just the Psalter and other basic material; the various liturgical texts cost extra. So I am in the minority working in the public domain.

 

[linux.poet]

I'm sure you didn't mean your list were hard and fast rules. Rather suggestions for a budding poet?

Yes. There are very few hard and fast rules in poetry, aside from the strict ones for traditional ones like limericks and sonnets.