Tools & Tips for Poets

By Billy Dean

Learn how to decide why you are writing a poem, who you are writing it for, what criteria you will use to edit it, and where you can publish it. Touch your readers with sight, sound, sense and spirit. Learn how to merge what a poem means with how it means. Learn to merge showing and telling, imagery and information, facts and feelings.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Billy Dean
• Release date: Oct 5, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463314876

Billy Dean

Billy Dean is a free-lance writer with degrees in English and Engineering. He has written articles for trade journals, been a newspaper columnist, performed poetry at open mic events, and had his essays, memoirs, poems, stories and how-to guides published with on-line magazines and e-book distributors.

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Tools & tIps for poets

by Billy Dean

Copyright 2023

Smashwords Edition

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contents

Dear Poets

Decide What Poetry Is

Consider Mainstream Readers

Play First, then Work

Show and Tell

Extend Your Metaphors

Be Profound Not Puzzling

Give Ground to Grammar

Manage the Flow

Choose the Right Words

Target Your Audience

Edit for Sight, Sound, Sense & Spirit

Solicit Feedback

Perform Your Poetry

Polish Your Poetry

Publish Your Poetry

« Dear Poets »

Prose is ABOUT sex and chocolate.

Poetry IS sex and chocolate!

Time isn't static. Today becomes yesterday, and tomorrow becomes today, carrying changes from the past into the future. Some claim time killed poetry, but poetry is extant, not extinct. If it were a tree, its roots would be deep in the ground of human history. And its branches would be the way it has evolved to reflect the practices of professional and amateur poets and the preferences of academic and non-academic audiences.

And thanks to libraries, the Internet and other media, poetry from today and yesterday--even thousands of years ago--can speak to our hearts and minds.

Poetry is what you are seeking and the poet has found, wrote Carleton Noyes, that step beyond which you were about to take but were not certain of the way.

Yes, a poem can show people things they don't see or don't know how to express. It can show them the way. So you and I want our poems to be well-received. Like children, they deserve the best preparation we can give them, because once they leave home they will have to speak for themselves.

Preparing a poem is like traveling toward Earth from outer space. As you get closer and closer to your destination, your field of vision narrows. Your poem becomes progressively more specific: You brainstorm a general idea, a memory or an observation. You compose a rough draft. Then you analyze, edit and polish it to satisfy the preferences of a specific audience.

Let's pretend it's Christmas morning. You're a child surrounded by dozens of ornaments, but no tree. No place to hang the ornaments. No structure to give the ornaments a common purpose. Without context, you have no mental image of the forest as you work your way through the trees.

Yes, I've mixed my metaphors, but don't revoke my license to practice poetry. I'm calling your attention to the importance of having goals in mind on your way from a general idea to a specific poem. Goals ensure that every element of a poem meshes with the others, that each element contributes to a common purpose.

Get in touch with why you are writing this poem;

Decide who you are writing it for;

Establish what criteria you will use to edit it;

Research where you can publish it;

Some poets compose without rules or recipes—a little of this, a little of that and something sensory-rich and taste-perfect appears as if by magic. Others need rules and recipes. Either way, these tools and tips will help you touch your readers with sight, sound, sense and spirit.

You'll learn