How To Write Poetry

How to Write Poetry

From Menletter July 2002

By Tim Baehr

I grew up disliking poetry. Not exactly hating it, but seeing it as irrelevant. I'll bet many of you share my history: over-analyzing poetry in high school or college, draining the life out of it by analyzing all the iambs, anapests, rhyme schemes, obscure symbolism. And reading over-familiar stuff repeatedly so that I never wanted to see another piece by Frost, e.e. cummings, or Shakespeare.

Getting involved in men's work provided a different perspective. After all, some people call it the mythoPOETIC movement. Well, some of the poetry works as slices of life, distillations of emotion. Bly, Hillman, and Meade - together and separately - included poetry in their workshops and retreats, finally collecting a huge amount of it in "The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart." Now I see copies of it at men's gatherings; sometimes it's so well-read that it's held together with duct tape.

When I discovered Rumi (at gatherings and collected in "Rag and Bone"), my appreciation deepened. Here was a guy (through western adaptations by Coleman Barks and others) whose words often reached the heart's ear long before they reached the head's ear.

So I began reading and appreciating poetry - and writing it only very occasionally. One occasion, in fact, was the annual Men's Wisdom Council at Rowe. Larry Murphy, one of the facilitators and a prolific poet, got us to integrate and focus our feelings and experiences and put them on paper. He didn't exactly "teach" poetry; he "encouraged" it. The results, shared among the men, were remarkable.

My output doubled - from one to two poems a year.

What were my roadblocks? Same as for lots of men: I was suspicious of "flowery" language, yet the ordinary stuff didn't sound very "poetic." I felt I had nothing to write about (except in extraordinary circumstances like the intensity and safety of the Council). My attempts during the "ordinary" part of the year ended up in the trash - too sentimental, too awkward.

Then something happened. Or a few things, actually.

I had been writing, but not poetry. In fact, I've been writing for pay for over 30 years: textbooks for grade-school students, newsletters, technical documentation, and the like. My "recreational" writing was essays - fillers for the back page of a church newsletter.

I began to write about certain aspects of my life, things like memories of my dad or adventures I had as a kid. One of the first pieces was a poem (written at Wisdom Council) about my oldest son, but you could have unwound all the lines and stuck them together, and it would have read like an essay or short story. The language was plain. Nothing rhymed. I paid a little attention to the rhythm of the words and tried to make the images sharp, but that was about it for poetic technique.

One essay, about a year later, was about my dad. I sent it to my brother, and he wrote back that the piece sure sounded like Dad, but it would work better as a poem. Aw, shit. Somebody telling me - a writer - how to write. Well, his reasoning was pretty good: By dividing the essay into shorter lines, I would be forcing the reader's focus on particular thoughts. I tried it. Damn if it didn't work. I started carrying around a little notebook to jot down half-remembered phrases, brain residue from childhood, stuff I heard on the radio.

So now I write more, a couple poems a month on the average. It's not much, but they add up. And I learned a couple things that you might find helpful.

1. What to write about. You. Your life. What you see, hear, smell, feel, remember from ten minutes ago or ten years ago.

2. How to write it. One way is to start with a single image or idea and see where it takes you. The poem about my dad started when I was wiping bird shit off my car and remembering my dad (who died 8 years ago) fussing over bird shit on his car. (Ultimately, it led to a major reconciliation in how I felt about him. Another story for another time.) Use some poets' tricks of the trade. Repeat sounds, words, and lines for emphasis. Pay attention to the rhythm of the words and maybe the music in them. For instance, if you begin a few words with the same sound, you create a different kind of image. "I was unwise, overweight, and middle-aged" might become "I was foolish, fat, and fifty." This sometimes happens later, when you're editing or rewriting. For first drafts, it may help to just write as if you were taking notes for your own use.

3. Who(m) to write for. You. Only you. No one ever has to see what you write, so you are your most important reader. If you can satisfy yourself, no one else matters. But you may be surprised when you share your poetry and see other men nodding their heads in recognition.

4. Where and when to write. Any time, any place. I find it useful to carry a small spiral-bound notebook and some sticky notes. I want to be able to rip out a page I don't like or crumple up a sticky note when I make a false start.

5. What to write. This is different from "what to write about." Write short stuff, long stuff, single impressions, whole remembrances. Write prose or poetry; it doesn't matter. I always had the attitude that I had to get things perfect in my head before I wrote anything down. If that works for you, fine. But I changed, and now I write stuff, sometimes literally "stuff" that I know I'll change.

6. How to keep focus. Shorten. I've almost never written anything that couldn't be made shorter and more vivid. Wait a week and look at something you've written. Is there one essential truth in your essay or poem? Is it hidden by other stuff around it? Yank out the good stuff and polish it. Keep the other stuff as raw materials for another poem.

7. How to get at the truth. Lie. Sometimes you can get closer to the truth by bending it a bit. It may be as simple as changing the location, time of day, color of the car, and so on. Or you may want to add a detail or character from some other event. Make connections. The bird shit poem connected to a lot of other quirks I share with my dad, none of which I liked. Another poem, about alternate realities, linked drunk driving, a flying grapefruit, and dozing off at a concert.

8. Why to do it. To get at the truth. Your truth. To create a record of your life. To make connections. (Sometimes the process of writing itself is very revealing.) To remember what you did and thought. (One of my short poems is about driving my son to school. We were silent. He was using his electric shaver. That's all that happened. In ten years I can read that poem and recreate the moment.)

Here's the bird shit poem. It may do nothing for you; that's OK. I offer it only as an example of how you can take an ordinary event and turn it into something meaningful to you.

While cleaning bird shit off the car

Dad and I weren't close.

Not good at communication, either of us.

I don't think I liked him much.

He had some mannerisms -

a tone of voice

a too-often-repeated turn of phrase

a splay-footed walk

a laissez-faire way of avoiding conflict

an elaborately slow way of moving

when he was concentrating

or trying to make a point.

I tried to eliminate all this - and more -

from my way of being.

But I see or hear one or more of them

In me every day.

He reaches out from the ashes to say,

"Like this."

My car, stolen once already,

Sits under a bird feeder at the

safer end of the driveway,

Close to the house.

Every morning, I wipe off bird shit.

And I remember Dad

Fussily wiping off gull shit -

One of his daily retirement routines -

To prevent the acids, concentrated by

the Florida sun,

From eating through the wax and

into the paint.

I fuss over bird shit. Like Dad.

I talk and walk funny. Like Dad.

I avoid conflict. Like Dad.

My movements, under stress, are elaborately

slow. Like Dad.

Dad and I weren't close.

We didn't communicate much.

I wasn't sure I actually liked him.

Now he's gone, we communicate every day.

I cannot learn to love myself

Until I learn to love that man.