Tag Archives: Advice for writing a good poem

How to Write a Poem

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How to Write a Poem

Only a fool waits for a poem to come to him.
You have to call for it like a proper blind date,
knocking on its door
and seeing beauty in whatever opens it.

Take it dancing.
Twirl it around the floor,
letting words fly off in all directions.

Leave what flutters off alone.
Someone else will pick it up
and dance with it.
No word is a wallflower,
although some are chosen more frequently to dance.
Those are the words to avoid.
 
Do not always choose the prettiest words.
In the dance of the poem,
the ugliest of words acquire a charm.

Do not insist that you yourself lead.
Let the poem, instead, draw you
off the dance floor,
out the door
and down the path
to deep woods
where all the wild words live.

Gather them in bouquets
or weave them into chains
to crown your head––
that head of the poet
who follows where the poems go
and collects them by armfuls to share with the world.

Our Day 4 NaPoWriMo assignment was to write a poem in the form of a prompt.

Mentoring Poetry

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Since the prompt today is “mentor,”  I am going to send you back in time three years to a poem I wrote about mentoring that I have no memory of having written, so even if you were around way back then, perhaps you’ll be ready to read it again as well.  Here is the link.

 

The prompt today is mentor.

This Poem is a Sort of Street

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(Click first photo to enlarge, then click on arrows.)

This Poem is a Sort of Street

This poem is a sort of street.
I wonder who I’m going to meet
as I walk down the dust of it––
plod along the “must” of it.
I do not know where I am going.
I follow it while never knowing
what’s around the next blind bend.
I do not know how it will end.

Each line is a new adventure
leading to acclaim or censure.
The GPS that’s guiding me––
determining what I will see––
is lodged so deep and far inside
a road stretched out so long and wide
that it must guide or I’ll get lost
in ruts of words and pay the cost

of trying to control by mind––
a street that’s meant to twist and wind
guided by a force within
that is intuitive and yin.
It is a guide that’s mostly lost
in this world so tempest-tossed.
The drop of it that I infuse
in rhymes that others then may choose

to read and ponder is the way
that I have chosen to try to pay
the toll for this tremendous gift
of life where I have learned too well
the lessons of the school bell.
I’ve learned to turn a deaf ear to
what pedants say I need to do
and take each day a road that’s new.

I’m led by dreams and intuition
down streets with no thought of fruition
but instead careen and ramble
without an outline or preamble
into places I’d never go
if I just reported what I know.
Then I record all that I see
so you can learn along with me.

 

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/street/