The Rules and Tips for Better Poetry

Ultimately, there are no rules to poetry. Setting up rules for such a creatively expressive piece of literature can limit the art of this style. However there are certain rules and tips successful poets put forward to give mediocre poetry that extra spunk that it needs. What I did was think up a manual that I’ll share to all Mibbians that will hopefully make successful poets out of everyone.

A Title that Allures

No one likes a title that is flat and/or tells the beginning and end of a story/poem. I for one am a very picky reader when it comes to poetry and when I come across a title that breaks this rule versus one that doesn’t, I will quickly overlook the poem that breaks the rules. Good titles create mystery and give the reader something to look forward to before reading the poem. Try to avoid titles like this: This Love I had has Killed Me. A title like that may lead the reader to believe that someone feel in love, their heart was broken and they’re depressed or had killed themselves. If a reader feels they can guess the beginning and end of a poem whether it’s right or not, they’ll probably overlook that poem. Also avoid extremely vague poems titles or commonly used titles such as Love, Death, or Suicide. Avoid such words in any title. It kills the mystery. Most readers want to read a unique poem with a unique poem description. If they reader feels the title isn’t unique, then they’ll probably think your poem is just as unique

Be watchful of the length of your poem title also. Readers don’t want the poem in the title. No one wants to see a paragraph before the poem has even begun. If you’re title reads something like The Pitiful Life of a Girl that Never Told the Ugly Truth, there’s a problem. That could be a poem itself. Look at it this way, if your title is longer than your poem, it needs fixing.

Titles that I’ve found successful are symbolic ones. My poem Dead Bird symbolizes dreams being killed. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou is a successful poem with a symbolic title. The caged bird symbolizes someone lacking physical freedom so they sing. It also symbolizes the lives of African Americans during that era.

A Good Structure is Good on the Eyes

Try to make the structure of the poem visually appealing. That is why there are many styles of poetry that follow a certain structure of lines, stanzas and syllables. I’m sure that when most readers look at a poem, they don’t want to see paragraphs. There are stories for that. And it’s just as bad if each line has one of two words while the poem goes on forever. Especially avoid random line lengths.

This is not as appealing:

To hell with insomnia, a mind on an adventure
A dream
Voyage
Across the ocean. Shapes moving in the
Dark.

As this:

To hell with insomnia
A mind on an adventure
A damn voyage
Across the ocean.
Shapes moving in the dark.

Try to keep the words or syllables in the poem around the same length or amount in each line. However, varying line lengths can work when there’s a pattern to it.

Poetry Should Paint 1000 Pictures

Poetry is a lot more exciting when a visual picture is painted by the words. Imagery is one of the most important literature devices in creative writing. If a poem is too vague or cliché in description, it’s not as appealing or creative.

Avoid using clichés, common words, or words with a large number of definitions (the word run has the most definitions of all words in the English vocabulary). Use other words, like sprint, if you mean running with your legs. Use leaked or dripped instead.

Here’s an example of a lackluster description.

A bruise on her skin
Such a hideous thing

I can hear the Z’s already. Ask yourself these questions when addressing an important noun. What appearance, smell, taste, feeling or sound does the noun have? If your description doesn’t at least answer one of those, then it may need some tweaking. Instead write:

Black and violet bruise on her brown skin
The pain it causes inside is such a hideous thing.

Although that is not the best use of imagery, it’s better than the previous example.

There are eleven color categories in English: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink, brown, black, white and gray. Artists tend to add tertiary colors. Delete those words from your vocabulary. The main colors are now crimson, apricot, lemon, emerald, sapphire, amethyst, fuchsia, chocolate, coal, snowy and ashen. Take those words and go. Come up with other words. Be creative with it.

No Clichés

Use metaphors. Metaphors are the most common way to create visual imagery in poems. It never fails and never gets old. Try to make comparisons instead of bland everyday sentences. Here’s an example of a bland description.

Her smile is very beautiful
And needed in my life.

There are many more creative ways of expressing her smile without making the observation so obvious and common. Here’s a slightly better example.

Her smile is the rain
On a hot summer day.
Or the sun on a cold
Overcast morning.

Be inventive. Don’t be afraid to use your literary devices, metaphors. and similes.

Create a fluent flow.

This is one of the biggest problems I’ve seen with poets. I’ve seen four main problems when it comes to fluency: rhyme, syllables, stanzas, and punctuation. Rhyme is the biggest one so I’ll tackle that one first. A common flow disruption I’ve seen with rhyme is that there is an imbalance of rhymes at the end of a line(s). An example:

There is a tree
With a honey bee
That buzzes around
And pollinates flowers.

To me, that is a disruption of flow. That is why many poem types have a specific rhyme scheme that doesn’t disrupt the flow. If your poem has a rhyme scheme like this: abac adec bbbf, then maybe it needs some changes. Poems flow better if they have an expected rhyme scheme or no scheme at all. Try something like this: abab cdcd. Or you can be creative and do something like this: abac d fefc d ghgc d. I love a good inventive rhyme scheme.

Because syllables have already been discussed with the line length, I will move on to stanzas. The most common flaw I see with stanza poetry is that sometimes the stanzas start with a pattern of four lines per stanza, and then the writer feels the need to include that stand alone line at the end. You tell me, which flows better.

No colors in the dark
Just the grays of your voice
The jade of your breathing
Listen close by choice

Nothing can compare.

Or does this sound better.

No colors in the dark
Just the gays of your voice
The jade of your breathing
Listen close by choice

Nothing can compare
To the silence of your noise.

Just look at it this way, if you want the last stanza to have fewer lines then use half of the amount of lines. However, this only applies if all the stanzas are the same length except for the last two.

The only punctuation used in poetry is for implying a rest or pause in reading the poem. If your pauses are too random and unexpected, it could jeopardize the flow. Example:

The car keeps crashing.
There goes,
All my dreams and half my life
Has flown.
Out the wind shield.

It’s too choppy and disrupted. Here’s an improvement:

The car keeps crashing.
There goes
All my dreams and half my life
Has flown out the wind shield.
Only epics should go on forever.

Avoid long poems that go on for extended periods of time. Once you’ve gotten the point across, there’s no need to further your poem. It’s like beating a dead horse and it could put your reader to sleep.

Serve Poetry like Sushi: Raw.

Keep it kosher, authentic, organic, all free range. Poetry is better when told by the experienced. When I write poetry, I don’t do research. Poetry is not like fiction stories. Fiction stories are fake and aren’t meant to always be taken as heart felt as poetry. When I write poetry, I write it based on my feelings and life experiences. Try to stick to what you know when it comes to poetry.

If you follow these rules and tips, you should have no problem in producing more successful poetry. Just these tips alone could turn a mediocre poem to good, good to great, great to outstanding, outstanding to superb, and superb to mortal perfection.