The Purdue Online Writing Lab offers a brief introduction to writing poetry that focuses on the difficulty of “invention.” We’ve discussed the importance of noticing the world around you and developing the habit of keeping a writer’s notebook to capture your ideas. This idea is echoed in this resource on poetry writing:
“The hardest thing about writing a poem is often finding a place to start. You may have been told to “write what you know”—always good advice. Sometimes, certain images/moments/experiences will strike you as somehow important; something happens, and you find yourself thinking about it for days afterwards. It’s important, therefore, to always be aware of the world around you—always looking for inspiration.” Poetry Writing: Invention (Purdue OWL)
Joan Didion’s essay, “Why I Write” calls these images that “strike” her and stay with her as “shimmering” moments in her memory. She writes to find out what those moments mean to her. In this resource, searching for your subject in poetry has a similar possibility. “You find yourself thinking about it for days afterwards.” Try a poetic remembering of the event in your notebook and see if you learn more than simply recording what happened.
Another important section from this resource is its description of free verse. Many of us are exposed to rhyme and form in poetry as children. We learn through oral poetry through nursery rhymes, songs, and other types of “verse.” But many contemporary writers turn to to free verse. According to this source:
“Most contemporary poets write in free-verse instead. . . instead, the poem draws its shape from the natural pauses between thoughts and images. Contemporary poets use line breaks, caesura, and stanza breaks to slow a reader down or to emphasize important ideas, instead of relying on the repetition of sounds. Sound is still a vital element of contemporary poetry, but the aesthetic principles (what we find beautiful) have changed from the days of Shakespeare or even Robert Frost. The white space on the page is a valuable tool for poets, as it gives the reader time to pause and to make leaps between moments in the poem.” Poetry Writing: Invention-PurdueOWL
Line breaks, caesura, sound, and white space become the poet’s tools in this art form that focuses on and may even change our relationship with words we use every day.
Here is the URL for this resource in full:
https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/subject_specific_writing/creative_writing/poetry_writing/index.html
