How to Write Poetry and Short Poems

Writing poems

To begin to write poems of any kind one must know how to write poetry and how poetry works and its many definitions. I begin by saying that poetry really cannot be defined properly but dictionaries do give meanings to the terms Poem, Poet and Poetry. My own definitions are as follows.

Poem

Feelings, ideas, thoughts and expressionism through language

Poet

One who creates or manipulates all of the above, sometimes in rhyme.

Poetry

The end result of merging the 2 above

When you write your poem you should read it aloud as this helps you to get the ‘feel’ of the words and allows you to chop and change the structure.

Poetic licence

Experienced poets will have a great understanding of terms like meter, versification, rhythm, stanza, feet and metaphor but if your poem sounds right to you then it is right.

Daffodil poems discussed

TO DAFFODILS.
by Robert Herrick

Fair Daffodils, we weep to see
You haste away so soon;
As yet the early-rising sun
Has not attain'd his noon.

Short poetry writing

Many short poems have been written on daffodils and in the first verse of the classic ‘Robert Herrick’ poem we see that soon and noon are rhyming words but see and sun in lines 1 and 3 are not. But the poem does have a ‘flowing quality’ to it nonetheless.

Consider this next daffodil poem by William Wordsworth and we see that the 1st and 3rd lines rhyme together with cloud and crowd (reference AA), as do the 2nd and 4th with hills and daffodils (reference BB). The final 2 lines of the verse both rhyme together with trees and breeze. (reference CC) This is known as the ABABCC rhyming scheme. The stanzas of this poem each have six-lines and are written as a couplet rhyme.

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Image if you wrote the first line and it sounded like this:

‘When I wandered through the field, I was so lonely, I felt like I was a solitary cloud floating in the sky above’

This clearly is too long winded for the opening line of a poem despite the fact that it makes sense. The real skill of writing poetry, apart from idea generation, is in reducing this perfectly good starting sentence to poetic form. Wordsworth managed to reduce the sentence, whilst retaining its meaning, to just 6 words.

Iambic in poetry

Each line of Wordsworth’s poem is written and metered in iambic tetrameter which sound really complicated to me. The poem when read aloud sounds just right to me and I do not need to know what an iamb is to appreciate or write poetry. However I will try to describe the meaning. An iamb is a metrical foot consisting of 2 syllables, a short syllable followed by a long one. The ‘short’ is unstressed and the ‘long’ is stressed. Tetrameter means 4 feet. I would try to understand the second line broken into iambs and feet as follows (That floats) (on high) (o'er vales) (and hills)

To an Early Daffodil

by Amy Lowell

Thou yellow trumpeter of laggard Spring!
Thou herald of rich Summer's myriad flowers!
The climbing sun with new recovered powers
Does warm thee into being, through the ring

Here in this poem the rhyming scheme is ABBA. The poem was written by Amy Lowell Who was an American poet from Massachusetts. Amy won the famous award of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1926. Her winning work was called ‘What's O'Clock’

Smaller Daffodil poems

There is an old English ditty or rhyme for children written about daffodils of which I know only the first 2 lines.

Daffy-down-dilly is new come to town,
With a yellow petticoat and a green gown.

Short poems can be written as Birthday poems or in the stand alone haiku format which has only 17 syllables on 3 lines and does not have to involve rhyme. See example below.

Daffodil haiku
by Mark Bronze

Daffodils of gold
The trumpeters are blowing
A heavenly sight

There are no rules on how to write poetry and everyone has a poetic licence of their own to create their own literature and poetry.