Natalie Walker

                                                      Creating Lyric Poetry

            When thinking of the term “lyric poetry” one tends to think of rhyming poems that may have a hallmark feel, however as I have learned from this workshop lyric poetry is simply poems that reflect one’s emotions in a melodic way. For a beginning poet such as myself it is overwhelming to think about expressing emotion in poetic form, although in my experience of writing it seemed to me that was the only way to express myself, was through poetry; that in it-self was a revelation about how poetry is created.

            The course definition of lyric poetry, “A brief subjective poem strongly marked by imagination, melody, and emotion, and creating for the reader a single, unified impression. . . .  Subjectivity, too, is an important element of a form which is the personal expression of personal emotion imaginatively phrased” (A Handbook to Literature). In            order to create a poem that fits in with the definition stated above the poet needs to be willing to expose their inner most feelings and emotions, to make a poem that will engage the reader and allow them to feel the emotion that created the poem the author must let the emotion run throughout the entire poem. “Most contemporary poets draw directly or indirectly from personal experience” (Three Genres). The subjectivity of the poems even though they are personal to the poet they become understood and relatable to the audience.

            Throughout other courses that I have taken that have dealt with reading and writing poetry, I have learned that poetry is an excellent place to not only put into words true emotions but also to play with language in order to make the meaning of the poem more visible. “All creative writers pay close attention to how they use their words, but poets often take a particular delight in fresh and ingenious phrasing. They assume their work is going to be read more deliberately than prose and so feel free to push language into new configurations” (Three Genres). I have never taken it upon myself to sit down and write poetry before and so never thought about what it took to write a poem. However, after writing my own poetry and going through several revisions I realize that language and the way it is laid out on the page can either take away from the poem or add to it. Thinking about the specific words and which ones will make the most impact and considering the spacing, the pauses and places that need emphasis were all new thoughts to me as I created my poem.

            As I wrote my own poem I had to not fall into the trap of writing a vague poem. I needed to make sure that there were some concrete images in the poem to sharpen the poem and take it from abstract to concrete. “The craft of writing poetry includes the effective use of images, the ways we create sound and rhythm with language, the ways we structure and order our material” (Three Genres). Using different forms of imagery such as, sound, language, and images; the poem becomes a vessel that can illustrate powerfully abstract concepts such as emotions. Crafting a well-formed poem takes time and practice and I found that to be all too true as I wrote and revised my own poem. It takes a conscious effort to write a poem that has some form to it and some meaning as well.

            I also found when thinking of a subject and writing the first draft of the poem that it did not carry much weight, however, when I reworked the poem a few times the tone of the poem became much more evident through the reordered lines and brand new additions. “Because tone reveals the poet’s attitude toward his or her subject, it becomes part of the meaning even more frequently than it does in common speech” (Three Genres). After writing the final version of my poem I found the tone of the poem had become clearer. It was more distinct what kind of tone my poem had as opposed to the first draft. The attention to tone was another part of poetry writing that I had never thought about as I read different poets. The intense and deliberate attention to the craft of a poem was a new experience for me and, one I found extremely enlightening.