An awareness of the techniques used when writing can lead to better writing. Visit the link above for a great website that lists various figures of speech and put them to use in your next poem. There will be some that are familiar, but I’m sure there will be a few that you will find useful.

Write a poem paying very close attention to the schemes that you use. Maybe focus on a particular set, such as schemes of omission or repetition.

Reading poetry can always be a great way to clear your mind and find something to write about, but listening to poets read their work can also be of great inspiration. Write a poem based on a reading of poem. The poem can be about hearing the words, a specific word or sound of a word, about sound in general, or about listening. Just make sure sound is a strong part of the poem.

There are some excellent resources for finding poems read aloud online.  Here are a few that I like:

• PennSound
• BBC Poetry Out Loud
• The Poetry Archive
• The Poetry Foundation
• The Writer’s Almanac

Maya Angelou said in an interview here that all art is auto-biographical an confessional in some way. In that mode of thinking, write a poem that indirectly deals with something from your past that isn’t in the first person and isn’t narrative. This way you can focus on the effects of the event, without falling into the “trap of what happened.” Convey the emotion, and keep in mind the things Charles Simic said about writing.

An online Literary Journal I regularly read that has the aesthetic statement that “poetry is meant to understood, not decoded.”

I recently read this advice from Charles Simic at the Library of Congress website:

1. Don’t tell the readers what they already know about life.
2. Don’t assume you’re the only one in the world who suffers.
3. Some of the greatest poems in the language are sonnets and poems not many lines longer than that, so don’t overwrite.
4. The use of images, similes and metaphors make poems concise. Close your eyes, and let your imagination tell you what to do.
5. Say the words you are writing aloud and let your ear decide what word comes next.
6. What you are writing down is a draft that will need additional tinkering, perhaps many months, and even years of tinkering.
7. Remember, a poem is a time machine you are constructing, a vehicle that will allow someone to travel in their own mind, so don’t be surprised if it takes a while to get all its engine parts properly working.

Write a poem about a person’s encounter with  The Angel of Death/the Grim Reaper.

Great example:

This is from one of my favorite collections of poetry,  Delights & Shadows by Ted Kooser.  If you’d like to read more about Ted Kooser, go here.

Tattoo

What once was meant to be a statement—
a dripping dagger held in the fist
of a shuddering heart—is now just a bruise
on a bony old shoulder, the spot
where vanity once punched him hard
and the ache lingered on. He looks like
someone you had to reckon with,
strong as a stallion, fast and ornery,
but on this chilly morning, as he walks
between the tables at a yard sale
with the sleeves of his tight black T-shirt
rolled up to show us who he was,
he is only another old man, picking up
broken tools and putting them back,
his heart gone soft and blue with stories.

from Delights & Shadows, Copper Canyon Press, Port Townsend, WA 2004

A great example of making the specific universal.  This is from an excellent collection of poems Ellen Bass’ The Human Line.  If you’d like to read more about Ellen Bass, go here.

Gate C22 – Ellen Bass

At gate C22 in the Portland airport
a man in a broad-band leather hat kissed
a woman arriving from Orange County.
They kissed and kissed and kissed. Long after
the other passengers clicked the handles of their carry-ons
and wheeled briskly toward short-term parking,
the couple stood there, arms wrapped around each other
like he’d just staggered off the boat at Ellis Island,
like she’d been released at last from ICU, snapped
out of a coma, survived bone cancer, made it down
from Annapurna in only the clothes she was wearing.

Neither of them was young. His beard was gray.
She carried a few extra pounds you could imagine
her saying she had to lose. But they kissed lavish
kisses like the ocean in the early morning,
the way it gathers and swells, sucking
each rock under, swallowing it
again and again. We were all watching–
passengers waiting for the delayed flight
to San Jose, the stewardesses, the pilots,
the aproned woman icing Cinnabons, the man selling
sunglasses. We couldn’t look away. We could
taste the kisses crushed in our mouths.

But the best part was his face. When he drew back
and looked at her, his smile soft with wonder, almost
as though he were a mother still open from giving birth,
as your mother must have looked at you, no matter
what happened after–if she beat you or left you or
you’re lonely now–you once lay there, the vernix
not yet wiped off, and someone gazed at you
as if you were the first sunrise seen from the Earth.
The whole wing of the airport hushed,
all of us trying to slip into that woman’s middle-aged body,
her plaid Bermuda shorts, sleeveless blouse, glasses,
little gold hoop earrings, tilting our heads up.

I’ve found a wonderful website, Big Think; it is a global forum connecting people and ideas. The last few hours for me have been spent watching videos concerning poetry. This exercise is going to relate to a video of Robert Pinsky from the website. Two questions are discussed in the video: “when does the specific become universal?” and “how do you find the right physical image for an emotion?”

Pinsky says, “anything can become universal, any moment, any person’s idea at any one moment, any artifact, if you could understand it well enough, would be a portal into the whole rest of the universe.” After watching the video, write a poem about a specific experience or object for you that also has a universal meaning. Attempt to use the object or experience as a “doorway” to the universal. Make sure to choose something so natural and remarkable to you that writing about it is natural.

If you can’t think of anything, try writing about two different moments when different people have made the exact facial expression or emotion. Perhaps you’ve seen the same fear, anger, lust, or envy in the eyes of both your sibling as a child and your spouse. Compare the two in a poem to make it into something anyone could relate to.