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My poetic 8-step

by Allan Haslinds

This is not a poem (though there's one further on). Many of the readers here won't care about this, so feel free to skip it and go back to your reading.

Because I am driven to break things down and analyze them, I decided to break down how I go about writing poems. Maybe it will help a new poet or someone with writer's block someday. Your mileage may vary.

I realized that I don't always do the same thing, but here's one procedure that I sometime force myself to go through, one step at a time. It seems like it's pretty forced and anti-spontaneous, but it doesn't have to be once you become good at it and the process is more automatic and sub-conscious.

  1. Develop a clear idea of what point-and-a-half you want to deliver. You should be able to say it in two sentences, complete with subject, predicate, prepositions, and no you knows or kindas. The first sentence should be simple, and the second a little more profound consequnce of the first (that's the half point!).
  2. Ask yourself what made that point important to you. What made you think you wanted to write about it. This is an important step! Was it an experience you had? Do you have an image in a movie or a book that comes to mind?
  3. Let the images flow from that experience.
  4. Distill those images down to an essence and a reaction to them.
  5. Find other ideas and things with those same reactions.
  6. Assemble a mix of 2 and 4 into a story about your first sentence from step 1. How much of each type of image is a personal choice. Don't use 30 different small images if one extended one covers it all. Hit at least two senses, preferably three. Don't be afraid to describe motion and temperature. Combine words associated with different senses. Come around to point out your second sentence from step 1.
  7. Work on flow. Read aloud a lot. Make sure ideas and sentences that stretch across multiple lines get completed. Don't be afraid to scrap a line you like, especially if it's at odds with the rest of the poem. You can put it on the scrap heap and use it in a different poem later.
  8. Fine tune. Go away from the poem and come back to it, and see all the mistakes. Don't be afraid to post it and ask for feedback. Fresh eyes are the best at seeing the good and the bad in poems.
Here's an example, with the idea cribbed from a poem in the Poetry Clinic forum:
  1. People treat people that are different badly. Being treated badly is made worse by feeling ashamed of our own difference.
  2. Let's go with a very personal experience: the idea resonates because when I was in junior high I was teased for being Greek and having a funny name.
  3. I never got beat up, but got elbowed a lot. Lot of jokes about anal sex, and got called Jimmy the Greek and Greasy Greek. Tray knocked out of my hands in the cafeteria. "Hey Plato!" and "Hey Sew-Crates!" "Diner monkey" Some girls thought it was pretty cool, but the blonde-haired, blue-eyed type were just in it as a dare.
  4. Ashamed, thought I was lower than them. Self pity and hurting. Rejection. Surprised sometimes when it hit me unaware. Wanting but feeling out of reach. Feeling dirty.
  5. Being caught naked, being slapped across the face, a servant, drowning, grasping, unprotected in a cold wind or a desert sun. Boxer in a ring too tired to fend off blows. Hit by a train, car.
  6. Okay, let's put this together into a poetic sketch. We'll leave the editing process till later. (small bit of adult language ahead)
    With a shove, the glossy blue plastic barks,
    tumbling across the brown-grey floor with a clatter,
    chased by a bruised apple
    and a peanut butter cookie in a waxpaper bag.
    "Hey, look at me. I'm the fag, the ass-fucker,
    the greasy Greek" it shouts
    to a hot and stifling room,
    smelling of canned soup and week old milk.

    Not-so-hidden smiles smash into my face,
    followed by shouted jeers, each a blow
    Strong, bristling trunks of the Pefkias,
    the lessons of Sokrates and the might of Alexander
    Shout silent instructions from the ringside corner,
    and my long-tired arms are too slack to raise a glove.
    Six millenia of civilization crumple to the mat,
    and I just want to be from Baltimore.

    I go to find my apple.

  7. This and the last step are realized in the evolving poem that is in my library. It is called "Split decision". I decided the flow was pretty good the first time (Thats a combination of luck and practice.) but had to make changes in the ordering of lines in the second stanza.
  8. I started changing some of the images about Greece, to make them more accessible, including changing to the more recognizable spelling of Sokrates and fixing the hyphenation of some words (week-old milk). Brown-white floor was distracting and a bit less recognizable as a cafeteria than grey-white floor. Full stop after "each a blow" so it doesnt run into the defensive images. "Not-so-hidden" got changed to "concealed" because as someone pointed out, the hyphenation is too eye catching and disturbs the flow. "and my long-tired" became "but my long-tired" to increase the contrast between what I know I should do and what I end up doing.

04/23/2003

Posted on 04/24/2003
Copyright © 2024 Allan Haslinds

Member Comments on this Poem
Posted by Alex Smyth on 06/01/03 at 09:48 PM

Thanks, this has helped me on a particular image that has been giving me trouble. And it was free! Appreciate you taking the time to put it down.

Posted by Jeanne Marie Hoffman on 10/01/03 at 12:30 AM

Great tips, I especially like #1. Sometimes I find myself done with a poem, then realize I deviated a lot from what I orginally intended. I never actually put what I wanted down in writing, so it made it difficult for me to stick with it.

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