Peer Review Discussion: Poetic Justice
As you have discovered in this section, poetry starts with an emotion, an image, an event, or an impression. To this point, your job has been to use the tools of sound, structure and figurative language to make your poem take shape so others can share that moment or feeling with you. Read the following directions to be sure that you have completed steps 1-10. Then move on to steps 11 and 12.
Here is what you have already accomplished:
- Jot down on a piece of paper a description of an intense moment or feeling you have had.
- Use an idea web to free associate on that moment or idea.
- Look for a central image to use (a story to tell, a metaphor to expand, or a symbol to focus on).
- Think about the structure that best expresses what you want to say. (A controlled structure with a set rhythm or a rhyme scheme; or free verse where line breaks and stanza breaks provide the only structure; or a combination, perhaps).
- Keep the focus on the central image and express what you have to say. Write more than you think you should. Keep going until you wear the image or the emotion out.
- Put your draft aside for at least 24 hours.
- Revise your draft, take out the wordiness. (Remember: poetry does not need to be in complete sentences. Take out anything that is not adding to the central image or feeling.)
- Keep sound devices (alliteration, caesura, repetition) in mind and choose stronger and clearer verbs, adjectives, adverbs (and cut out the ones that aren’t absolutely necessary).
- Add figurative language, so that your poem uses at least one example of each of the following: symbolism, sensory imagery, metaphor/simile.
- Reassess punctuation, line breaks, and rhythm patterns (read your poem out loud to see if these changes might make a difference to how the poem is read).
