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448

To Write a Poem

  1. Question the situation and your goal for writing a poem.
    • Subject: What will the poem be about?
    • Purpose: Why are you writing the poem?
    • Audience: Who will read the poem?
  2. Planto use free-verse or traditional form in your poem.
  3. Research your topic.
    • Gathering: Brainstorm details about your topic. List descriptive details and feelings associated with your topic.
    • Researching: Study poetic forms and techniques. Use a rhyming dictionary to collect possible rhyme words for your poem—even free verse can use rhyme or near rhymes within its lines. (To learn much more, go to thoughtfullearning.com/h448.)
  4. Create the first draft of your poem.
    • Focus first on ideas and imagery.
    • Experiment with rhythm, rhyme, and enjambment (carrying sentences from line to line and ending them inside a line).
    • Create similes (comparing two things using like or as ), metaphors (saying one thing is another), and personification (giving objects or animals human characteristics) if appropriate for your poem.
    • Shape your ideas into the form you planned to use—free-verse or traditional.
  5. Improve the first draft.
    • Evaluate your first draft. Does the poem present your topic in a fresh way? Does it achieve your purpose and connect to your audience? Does every word and line work toward the poem’s success?
    • Revise your poem.

      Add sensory details to make your topic clearer.

      Cut parts of the poem that are not needed.

      Rearrange parts that are out of order. In a free-verse poem, experiment with different line breaks to affect overall flow and the emphasis of different words.

      Rewrite material that isn’t working well.

    • Edit your poem to make it read smoothly. Add or remove punctuation and capitalization to best engage the reader.
  6. Present your poem during a poetry reading or post it online for others to read. Gather many poems together (a group of your own, or together with friends) to create a collection, and publish it online, as an ebook, or through a print-on-demand service.
449

Poems

These student examples were all submissions to a call for gardening poems.

Store-Bought Fruit

Shakespearean Sonnet

A Shakespearean sonnet (often called an “English sonnet”) has an abab cdcd efef gg rhyme scheme. In a Shakespearean sonnet, each quatrain (four-line stanza) addresses the same central topic, though from a slightly different point of view.

Store-bought tomatoes taste too much like wax.

They’re picked too green, and “ripened” with some gas.

They’re tough enough to be cut with an axe.

Don’t offer one to me. No thanks. I’ll pass.

And store-bought peaches, that’s another crime.

Biting a peach should never yield a crunch.

Unless a peach is soft and juicy, I’m

Not interested in having one for lunch.

Store-bought strawberries, too, are way too tough.

Those things are mainly pith, surrounding air.

I ate one once, and once was quite enough.

I wouldn’t eat another on a dare.

So don’t ask me to dinner if you’re rude

And hope to serve up such factory food.

—Joellen Romine

 

Canning with Gran

Petrarchan Sonnet

The abbaabba rhyme scheme of the octave (eight-line stanza) identifies this as a Petrarchan sonnet (often called an “Italian sonnet”). In a Petrarchan sonnet, the octave raises a topic, and the sestet (six-line ending stanza) responds. The rhyme scheme of a Petrarchan sonnet’s sestet is often cdecde but may take many other variations.

My gran said it was time to can green beans.

She wanted me to learn. That night we snapped

four bushels-full to pieces, rinsed them, scrapped

the stems, boiled jars and lids and seals (routine

for Gran, though new to me, not yet a teen),

filled jars with beans and boiling water, capped

them, listened for each seal to pop, then wrapped

a boxful just for me. She held the screen

door open as I left. Three years ago

that was. Now Gran is gone. That final scene

would be our last together, and my elbow

brushing hers our final touch. But echoes

of things that we discussed, her voice, serene,

are stored for me in Gran’s canning mementos.

—Joaquin Manjarres

 

plantings

Free-Verse Poem

Free-verse poetry doesn’t have a strict rhythm or rhyme scheme.

why all these squared
plots

and straight
lines

and all these
fences

ever see farmland
from the sky

the straight lines
bending to suit a river’s
curve
or

the slope
of a steep

steep
hill

squared plots
and

straight lines

are
for
stiff

—Sherril Sovern

 
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