Writing Poetry - How to Begin
By Edwina Peterson Cross


All you need to be able to write a poem is an emotion or an experience, a sensation or a perception, a dream or a concept, an idea or an image, a thought or a memory - any of the above and your own words. Poetry is an experience - something that has happened to a person, something that may seem obvious, an everyday occurrence expressed in a minimum number of words as it has never been expressed before. There are as many ways to write a poem as there are people in the world. Poetry can be written for hearts ease, for remembrance, for catharsis, for fun. Paul Valery in The Art of Poetry declares that "Poetry is to Prose as Dancing is to Walking." You can experience the joy, exhilaration and beauty of the dance. You don't have to be Baryshnikov.

Everyone deals everyday in miracles; if we are observant enough to see them. As a mother I have been privileged to be able to see first hand the mystery, wonder and poetry in a baby's first smile, a toddlers sleep flushed cheek, a sixteen-year-old filled with trimuph. When we can capture these moments with words, we have something personal, precious and lasting.

If you would like to try writing poetry where should you begin? Don't start by worrying about how to write a sonnet, an elegiac quatrain or a closed couplet. Simply start by transferring your thoughts, emotions and the images you see each day into words. Poetry involves thinking and seeing in different ways and translating those thoughts and perceptions into interesting language. Seeing your daughter's hair as a streak of sunshine rather than merely blonde, thinking of your son as a soaring eagle as he swings, stopping to see the dew pooling in the curve of a flower. As you find yourself making these observations - put them down on paper. Some poets I know say they always keep a notebook handy. Others admit to writing on the backs of envelopes, sales slips and old homework papers.

There are many technical tools you can experiment with, applying them to your own observations and writing style. Here are just a few.


Condensation and Richness
Poetry is way of reducing an experience or a feeling to its essence - like painting miniatures; one tries to evoke the whole by concentrating its essential elements into a small package. Where prose swells a scene, poetry condenses it. This is known as Condensation or Richness. When you take lines from your journal such as; "Lisa spent the whole afternoon on the couch nestled up in her blanket pretending she was a kitten. She seemed so snug and secure and finally she fell asleep." and you turn it into:
Lisa nestles
Blanket wrapped
Soft and sleepy
Snug and secure
Becoming kitten

you have employed Condensation and turned prose into poetry.

Simile
A Simile is an expressed comparison, often using the words, "like," "as," "as if" or "than." When you look at your baby and say; "her eyes are like soft pools of chocolate," you have used a simile.

Metaphor
A Metaphor is an implied comparison, without explicit words of comparison. When you write of your toddler, "He is a hurricane waiting to happen," you have used a metaphor.

Free Verse and Rhyme
Poetry does not have to Rhyme. Poems are made with words expressing thought and feeling. A rhyme is not necessary to make a poem complete. Many modern as well as ancient poets have written in Free Verse which is not usually rhymed and is not based on strict meter. When a poem does rhyme, the rhyme should be natural and unforced and the meter, or beat, in each line should be even, consistent and uncrowded. Most importantly the search for rhyme should not alter the meaning or feeling of the poem.

Haiku
There are many different Poetry Forms such as a sonnet, ballad, chant or couplet. Haiku is a short Poetry Form which is easy to learn and use. Haiku can isolate images or pictures in a concise simple way that can capture moments of wonder and grace. Haiku consists of three lines, the first line having five syllables, the second seven and the third five. When your observation of the sunset over the river becomes:

Brief, bright melon sky (7 syllables)
Gilds the river liquid gold (5 syllables)
Shadows wet and deep (7 syllables)
you have written a Haiku.


Alliteration
Alliteration is the repetition of sounds, usually at the beginning of words. If you remember your son standing quietly in the fading winter light and you write, "I see him still in the soft silver shadows," you have used alliteration.


So, go ahead! Paint the world with your own words, capture an image and freeze it in time, stitch a memory out of language, discover a little portion of life that is whole and meaningful to you - write a poem! Not every poem will be published, but everyone can have the thrill and satisfaction of distilling their own heart's thoughts into their own chosen words and preserving a piece of their life forever.


(This article was first published in Welcome Home Magazine November, 1996)