How to Write a Poem and the Gift of Where to Begin
How poems beget poetry, eleventy hundred meanings of a word and why English is a poor substitute for language
"We ourselves are a poem,(that) there is a poet behind the world, who not only speaks that world into being but speaks us into it, so that we might behold its glory and respond ourselves with poems spoken back to the maker."
—Malcolm Guite, The Word Within the Words, Fortress Press, 2022
When I am sketching out the bones of a poem, my notes often look like a wonky sunflower—a roundish center shape with a word in the middle and spokes (or flower petals) coming out like rays. When I'm making a web, those center words are generated from sticky notes and notebooks I’ve scribbled in through the years, pausing as I am wont to do when I land on a word I find pregnant with meaning, committing to paper in order to use it later.
This is something all writers do, yes?
I demonstrated this web brainstorming idea in a small workshop last year, helping people generate their own ideas from a single word. The model works well for my abstract brain, but maybe you’re more linear or sequential. Perhaps when you draft a poem it begins with a single sentence inspired during a walk with the dog or sitting on the porch in the quiet or while slicing onions. Moving ones body often lends itself to creativity, at lease clearing away plethora of input in our ping-ponging brains.
Very often, though, poetry inspiration comes from other poems and poets.
Some years ago during a weeklong workshop, I heard poet Malcolm Guite discuss the genesis of one of his sonnets.
Malcolm was describing his poetic responses to the O Antiphons in his book, “Waiting on the Word,”1 in particular, O Sapientia, where these lines appear,
O sounding Song whose depth is sounding me,
O Memory of time, reminding me,
My Ground of Being, always grounding me,
My Maker’s Bounding Line, defining me,
Describing the genesis of the poem, he illuminated the different meanings of the word bound—
past tense for binding up a wound
bound as in Tigger
bound as in ‘he’s bound to do it’
bound as in bound for glory
bound as in book binding and boundary and edges…well, the list is a long one.
He explained the thought process and origins behind the line in "O Sapientia” above, “My Maker’s bounding line, defining me.”
The word ‘bounding’ relates to the very early days of book binding, the details of which I don’t completely recall, but found fascinating nonetheless. Then a poetry rabbit trail took me to words like boundary and books and well… all the ways I have been bordered by the gift of reading during my life. 2
Then I wrote this:
My Life is Bound by Books
Edges of a land I walk inside where quiet
lives and words whisper. Borders contain
my steps, become a place of freedom as I
journey. My Maker’s bounding line holds
me as He hands me another tome from life’s
shelf labeled “Providence and Prayer.”
Divine Librarian, He points to gifts
of wonder, joy and peace, if only
for this brief space in time.
Covers close.
I shelve the volume, holding treasure
in this wide field grown with words,
bounding away into the world.
Wordsmithing before poem-writing to investigate the genesis of a word can lead to a deep well of inspiration. But honestly, sometimes I think English is a poor substitute for language. Latin and Greek have much more depth of nuance and meaning that adds heft and flavor to what we want to communicate. Many, many of our English words come from Latin, which the Webster’s Dictionary points out frequently.3 Studying the morphemes (chunks of meaning) in a word’s roots can unwrap any number of possbilities as a launching pad for a poem.
Words like sound, cast, make, rule, temper, pitch, scale, foil… rich with facets of meaning, depending on which way you turn them.
Now It’s Your Turn
Try this: Using this short list below, choose a word as a launching pad for a poem then draw a circle (or rectangle) in the middle of a page with 6 - 8 spokes going out like sun rays. Next, add a word or phrase that comes to mind around that particular word in the middle.
Flesh out the words and phrases into sentences. Sit with your scribbles for awhile and come back to write your own poem. See what shape it takes, what it’s trying to say. What is God speaking to you or about your world through the words that have come to the surface? You never know how you might connect with God through making friends with poetry.
I’d love to see what you write—come back and share?
Jumping Off Words—your poem launching pad
Channel
Sound
Cast
Anchor
Recover
Temper
Pitch
Scale
Ruler
Foil
Tender
Bound
ICYMI
Last week I introduced the PoetScribe community, a virtual community of scribing and copying poems. If you’d like to participate and find out more, just read the post first and then click on the button to download your PoetScribe pages.
Here’s the link to Malcolm’s seven O Antiphon sonnets
How Books Saved Me—a post from my website
Ahhh, to be rich enough to afford the 20 volume set of the Oxford English Dictionary. One can dream.
I posted "Daisy Chain" but perhaps didn't post in the right spot. I was going off the word prompt "bound". Anyway, it is by Marcia N. Lynch
Daisy Chain
Daisy-chained
Through nail-pierced palms,
Threaded,
Wound in His wounds.
Entwined
In a humble garland,
We are bound to love.