Immersed in verse.
Tool Kit for Young Poets
By Allan Wolf
Every craft has its tools and rules. All carpenters need equipment (a hammer, a saw) and they need a few rules (“Measure twice, cut once.” “Watch out for your fingers.”). Poets are no different. Here’s a glimpse into the poet’s toolbox, which contains the nuts and bolts of the poet’s craft ... a range of top-of-the-line poetic devices – tricks of the trade that turn your ideas into writing and your writing into poems. These are the poet’s power tools, the techniques that can transform the ordinary into the extraordinary.
Personification
Personification means to give human qualities to non-human things. Personification is magical, a kind of poetic wizardry. With a wave of the pen, poets can make clouds weep, brooks babble, and birds sing out hello.
Examples of Personification:
The broom waits patiently in the corner.
“Night woke to blush.” (Langston Hughes)
The spider bowed her welcome to the fly.
The sun hides its face.
Onomatopoeia
Words that sound like the things they mean. Mud would be no fun without “squish.” Potato chips would be boring without “crunch.” Imagine trying to dive without “splash,” or run a stick across a picket fence without “clatter.”
Talk
Squawk. Clank.
Crash. Boing.
Drip. Buzz.
Tick. Tock.
Bird. Chain.
Glass. Spring.
Drop. Fly.
Clock talk.
Metaphors Be with You
Really good poems allow the reader to feel something new or see an ordinary thing in an extraordinary way. Good poems make connections in the reader’s mind until the reader says, “Ah ha!” Sometimes, a good poem provides an answer to a question. But just as often, a poem asks a question with no clear answer.
When it comes to saying what can’t be said, the poet’s best friends are similes and metaphors. Poet or not, most everyone is familiar with metaphor and simile, probably because teachers find this poetic pair easy to teach. Students find them easy to spot on a test. And poets find them easy to write.
Metaphorical language compares two seemingly unlike things in order to point out a similarity.
You may never have considered fog to have much in common with a cat. Yet, Carl Sandburg points out the similar way they both move.
Fog
The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
Carl Sandburg
In “Fog,” readers combine the two ideas (cat + fog), conjure their own pictures, and say, “Ah ha, I see what you mean!” ... This is how metaphors create a collaboration between poet and reader.
So what’s the difference between metaphors and similes’? Technically, simile is a type of metaphor. You can distinguish simile from metaphor by looking for the telltale “like” or “as.” But that’s not really the point. Both simile and metaphor focus on the similarities between seemingly different things.
Poets use simile to tell us the similarity exists, while metaphor shows the similarity. In the second stanza, Sandburg does not tell us the fog is like a cat; instead, he shows us the fog moving in a catlike way.
Here are a few well-known metaphors and similes. Notice how the comparisons are not always spelled out, as in “The early bird catches the worm.”
Examples of Metaphors:
The early bird catches the worm.
It’ll be a piece of cake.
My teacher erupted in anger.
Her eyes burned a hole right through me.
Examples of Similes:
You are as smart as a whip.
He is light as a feather.
She’s as mean as a junkyard dog.
Life is like a box of chocolates.
Repetition, Repetition, Repetition
Poets repeat words, phrases, and entire lines to establish a predictable rhythm that draws the reader into the poem’s groove.
From The Bells
How it swells!
How it dwells
On the Future! – how it tells
Of the rapture that impels
To the swinging and the ringing
Of the bells, bells, bells –
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells –
To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells!
Edgar Allan Рое
Rhyme Doesn’t Pay ... Or Does It?
Pick up almost any book of “grown-up” poetry written today and you’ll notice that the poems rarely rhyme. What’s with that?
Rhyme is likely the most ancient and most important of all the poet’s tools. Poets have been using rhyme since the beginning of, well, time. Yet many of today’s most critically acclaimed poets leave rhyme at the bottom of their toolbox, untouched – like the slightly-out-of-style sweater you never take out of your drawer.
Personally, I like rhyme, although I admit that I use it mostly when I’m writing for young kids, when I’m writing lyrics to a song, or when my goal is humor. Maybe I shy away from rhyme because I find it very hard to do well. Rhyme is dangerous, and, like any potentially lethal substance, should be used sparingly and handled gently.
To a poet, rhyme is a powerful tool that can potentially detract from the poem’s overall effect. I’m not saying that poems should never rhyme, just that they shouldn’t rhyme all the – er – time. Rhyme should never be an end in itself, but only one of a long list of potential ingredients the poet might use to flavor the pot.
Writing unrhymed verse allows poets to focus on meaning. If the subject of your poem is an orange, for example, you could spend days looking for a word that rhymes with orange only to come up with “door hinge.” Then you have to figure out what a door hinge has to do with an orange, and suddenly you’re thinking about
Rhymes can be adventurous:
from Paul Revere’s Ride
Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Rhymes can be serious:
from Upon Julia’s Clothes
Whenas in silks my Julia goes,
Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows
That liquefaction of her clothes.
Robert Herrick
Rhymes can be silly:
from A Sad Tale or Hey,
Who Stole My Seat?
Without my behind, I am in quite a muddle.
I’ll have to have surgeons perform a re-buttal!
I have already confessed that I write poems that rhyme. I’ll even confess that I own a-gasp!-rhyming dictionary. But let me close with this last bit of advice when you’re forced to decide “to rhyme or not to rhyme?” Don’t use the word that rhymes; use the word that’s right.
So what kind of poet are you?
Maybe you see a little bit of yourself in more than one member of the Stereotype Poets’ Hall of Fame. The kind of poet you are may change from day to day. On Monday you may be Angry Poet. By Wednesday you’re feeling a little bit like Secret Poet. But come Friday, Hip-Hop Poet emerges. The truth is most poets are not so easy to identify.
What Kind of Poet Are You?
I would like to introduce you to the Stereotype Poets’ Hall of Fame.
Classic Poet Characteristics: swoony and pale Usual Topics: nature, passion, love Accessories: quill pen, puffy sleeves, notebook Location: among the wild flowers Real-Life Example: William Shakespeare |
Beat Poet Characteristics: way cool Usual Topics: jazz, rebellion Accessories: beret, bongos, notebook Location: hip coffee shop Real-Life Example: Allen Ginsberg |
 Gothic Poet
|
 Hip-Hop Poet
|
Secret Poet |
Angry Poet |
