What Maya Angelou Doesn't Want You to Know: Poetry Is Easy

I have taught poetry to high school and college students, and I usually toe the English teacher line.  You know, "poetry enables the writer to pack ideas, imagery, music, and emotion onto the page more densely than does prose."  Then we beat the life out of some important poems from the olden days.

But the truth is that writing poetry (the modern kind that doesn't rhyme) is super-cakey.  Anyone can do it if they just follow these rules:

1. Figure out what you want to say
2. Write down what you want to say.  Don't worry about how one thought connects to the next--that's the reader's job!
3. Polish it up.  If it seems banal, remove some words so that it makes less sense--this makes it seem profound.  Replace common words with words that have some kind of sonic impact and strong connotations.   Don't worry whether they fit in with your original idea; let the thesaurus be the wind beneath your wings!  A boring poem about a "knife" can become an exotic romance about a "scimitar."  Have you used too much punctuation?  Either throw it all out, or leave just a couple marks in random places to puzzle your reader.  Make sure you don't write all the way to the right margin: break your sentences into choppy fragments so that your reader knows this is a poem!

Let's try it!

I took some pictures of stuff I found outside my house (but within range of the baby monitor) while the girls were napping, and I was going to write a clever, jokey thing about how important it is to expose your kids to nature.  Then I decided that was too much work.  So now, I am going to write poetry about these pictures of nature until I get sick of it.  Then, I'm going to ask you to write some too!

Dan-DEEL-yun

My father-in-law,

who learned English mostly through hearsay

calls them dan-DEEL-yuns

With a shift in emphasis, he transforms the ignoble weed, 

a foppish Victorian

cartoon character,

into a forgotten Roman general

A golden invader

at the vanguard of the apocalypse;

sunshafts piercing his tawny carapace

So fearsome and beautiful

he is loathed and dreaded,

most ardently by those who admire him.

Thwarted by empyrean deceit

He drinks the poison

 

Alley Shitter

Do you feel shame,

or fear,

squatting behind my garage?

Were you surprised

that night,

the one that followed the day

when I installed

the motion detector lights?

Would you recognize me when we pass on the sidewalk?

Are you the kid with the cane and the backpack

who always wears the Pantera t-shirt?

Are you the middle-aged man who sifts through the dumpster

Tuesdays behind the apartments

leaving with one hand steering your bike and the other holding

Santa bags of aluminum and plastic?

Or are you asleep in the park during the day?

The tarpaper I left in the alley 

the roof of your creosote den

Do you feel shame?  Or,

with your back pressed against the yielding vinyl

of my neighbor's fence,

Do you chuckle,

imagining me yelling

Leave it!

As my dog fishes

your turd

from the weeds

Molt

Our springtime skin

is silent

Cool and dry

Voices near and

rumble under us

Windblown litter brushes past

but the beguiling paralysis

persists

We dare not move

for the least rasp of skin and scale could break the spell

and send us

from our warmth

back to shelter

Now it's your turn!

See--super easy!  Why don't you take three seconds and write some poetry inspired by the rest of these pictures, and post it in the comments.  I will email your work to Maya Angelou, my close personal friend *cough*bullshit*cough*, and see which one she likes best.  Then I will buy the winner lunch or something.  Maybe I'll give you some slightly used baby clothes.

Feel free to remix or mashup my poems, or write a better one about the pictures I already poeticized.