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Not As I Do

© Jough Dempsey

Getting started can be the hardest part of writing a poem. After you've begun, inertia will usually carry you forward - but carry you towards what? I'm going to list some quick "do's" and "don'ts" that you should consider while writing your poems. Keep in mind that no guidelines are absolute, but if you're going to break any of these "rules" - bear in mind that you have to have a firm grasp of the rules before you can break them. It's your poetry. I'm only here to help. But pay these words heed before you start crying yourself to sleep on that moth-ridden blankey you've had since you were nine years old because your poems keep getting rejected from that magazine.

Avoid cliché like the plague

Clichés are those hackneyed phrases that you hear over and over and weaken your poems. Poetry is about variety and inventiveness - if you use phrases and images that are already part of your culture and have been heard a gazillion times before, you're not doing your job as a poet.

Some clichés that may be familiar: "from the bottom of my heart," "to the depths of my soul" - these stock phrases take no imagination, and do nothing for your poems.

The reason that most amateur poets use clichés (other than laziness) is usually an attempt to side-step sentiment and go straight for the easy road to sounding "poetic."

But I saw that phrase in a poem by SHAKESPEARE! Yes, and when Shakespeare used it, it was new, fresh - it was his own invention. As James Joyce wrote: "After God, Shakespeare has created most."

A friend of mine, and one of the finest poets writing today, said that one of the reasons she was excited by writing poetry was the possibility of changing the world for someone - of coming up with an image that was so new and inventive that it changed their perception of that thing forever (although she said it far more eloquently than that).

So don't believe the hype. Avoid cliché as if it were a social disease.


I said "Sentiment," not "Sentimentality"

What's the difference? "Sentiment" is simply a thought or feeling based on feeling rather than reason. "Sentimentality" is an idea or expression marked by excessive sentiment. The former will give your poetry "depth" without pandering - the latter pushes the line by trying to artificially make a sentiment do more work than it can handle. It's the difference between comedy and farce - between drama and melodrama.