Nonfiction board, January 16, 2001:
Carmen was the moderator of the poetry forum on Xenith's old message boards. She was always on hand to give critiques of people's work when needed. She also ran a poetry zine on AOL back then, which this article was originally written for. It was later posted on the boards, probably in order to stem the tide of ill-written poetry.
So You Write Poetry
by
Carmen C.
Reader Beware: The first section is largely an opinionated editorial. The second section is not; however, beyond the information offered, it is meant to be vaguely entertaining.
I. What to Do
Popular, or mainstream, poetry (and I'm not talking about experiments or free-form or anything even remotely resembling the works of e.e. cummings) generally has one main characteristic, that characteristic being that the poem must have the sound of poetry--as opposed to the sound of prose--when read aloud. If a poem rolls off one's tongue like sweet water on a springtime morn, as most good poetry does, then the poem in question will most likely become popular, given the chance (i.e., publication). Popular poetry will end up like the poetry currently found in collections from twenty or two hundred years ago. Poetry like that is almost eternal.
If you want your poetry to last a lifetime, write for yourself. Write poetry in a journal and, for crying out loud, leave the poetry there. Don't torture others with your self-centered rambling. If you want your poetry to last for a generation, write for your generation. Write like everyone else you know does, or make a scene and write like no one else does. You might get lucky and end up famous for a few moments; you might even make some money. However, if you want your poetry to last forever, put in a little more work and write like the great ones did. Write for everyone and write well.
Above all else, if you do nothing else, please write well.
II. What Not to Do
Do you write poetry? If you answered yes, then you had better answer the next question in the same fashion.
Do you read poetry?
If you don't read poetry, get out and read some before you ever again attempt to write a poem. You cannot walk if you have never before seen anyone else walking--you can only crawl. You also cannot dance if you are still crawling like a baby. (Take that metaphor and eat it up. Eat it all up.)
It seems we've arrived at Step One in the "How to Do Everything Wrong at Once in Poetry" program:
Don't read poetry before you even imagine yourself writing poetry.
If you don't read poetry, you'll never know what real poetry is, and you'll never be a real poet. That's your goal, is it not? Great! Let's see the next step.
Step Two:
Insert commas at,
the end of,
every line break,
you throw in for no,
apparent,
reason.
If you do this, readers who haven't yet enrolled in this program will vomit all over your poetry and become visibly green every time they see or hear your name. Do you have this one down? Wonderful! You're making excellent progress.
Step Three:
Make lists of the things you hate about school lunches.
Or really, make any plain-jane list at all and call it poetry without making it poetic or adding any meaning. Readers new to your poetry will remain unacquainted with your poetry for reasons supposedly unbeknownst to you. As this serves our purposes perfectly, let us keep the intellectually flat "list-poem" in mind when we wish to be especially unsuccessful.
Step Four:
Use parentheses (constantly),
when you are writing your,
probably poorly (punctuated!) poetry.
Parentheses generally are used rarely or never in poetry. This is because the words within the parentheses function perfectly without the parentheses when it comes to poetry. Since you're considering being enrolled in this program, I expect you love being laughed at by the professional poetry community. This step will inevitably bring at least one published poet to laugh until s/he cries (and then begins weeping inexplicably).
Step Five:
Write a bad sentence or two about your dog and then separate it with linebreaks so it looks like poetry and then actually call it poetry. See below.
Write a bad sentence or,
two,
about your dog and,
then separate it with,
linebreaks,
(so it looks like,
poetry) and then actually call,
it poetry.
To top that all off you,
should make your mother,
or sister,
or brother,
or uncle,
or grandfather,
or third cousin,
or Oprah,
read your poem (and smile sweetly),
before she or he finds some place safe to,
vomit (so they don't make,
you feel bad).
Step six:
make speeling adn Punctuashun and gramar and capitaLizashun and typign mista kes without even bothrign to notise. edtiors off magizeens adn litrery jurnalles just luff the hek out off Poems like that. them eidtors Will enjoi decoratign they're wastebaskettts with you're cre8ive writign teknikes.
There you go! Now that we've covered the basics, you can be on your way to writing poetry to submit to those poetry places in the backs of many teen-oriented magazines.
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