Robert Frost: "no tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader."

Poetry wants to charm, fascinate, compel attention. It offers a fresh path through long-known places, a way of going that's odd, new.

A poem will usually have a subject, make a "point" (even several) --but what lifts it into language-specialness is tactics, an appealing method of drawing us in --seduction, absolutely!--a fetching manner of "coming on."

Frost again: If it is a wild tune, it is a poem."
And: "We enjoy the straight crookedness of a good walking stick."

Wild tune. Straight crookedness. Contradictory supports. Wildness tends toward chaos, the danger of incomprehensibility, untamed eccentricity, astounding but baffling crookedness. . . hence the need for tune, which is a principle of order, of sanity, straightness. If it's just a tune, if it's only straight-to-the-point. . .no tears, laughter, revelation, freshening, surprise.  If it's only a wildness, we're lost, pathless. We need both: intent, cause-effect, sequence, "point," -- as well as the unexpectedness that marks living language with the unduplicatable flavor of one writer's personality, thought, speech patterns, style, values, concerns.

GETTING STARTED ON A POEM

Is writing poetry something new for you? Here's a suggestion: begin by reading poetry -- aloud, if possible -- by contemporaries, those who can fill your consciousness with the sounds and subjects, the diction, thought, rhythms and reference, of our own wacky times. 
Next, take a vow not to rhyme. Just at the beginning. Why? Because playing with rhyme when you're starting out -- also with set stanza-structures and metrical notions -- may keep you busy skimming the surface instead of plunging to some personal depth. There will be plenty of time later to toss off a cute limerick or sweat over a sonnet or sestina.

Here's an exercise that many have found helpful. It works against blockage by asking you to start and end with arbitrary lines. That way you're not daunted by the thought of the high nobility of "committing a poem."
 The crucial tool against blocked poems is not a rhyming dictionary nor a metronome nor rules of any kind. Just the opposite. What's needed is relaxation and a willingness to leap off cliffs, verbally speaking.

EXERCISE:

Step one: say a few words, any words. The very words "say a few words" will do. Really, I mean any words, absolutely arbitrary words -- "absolutely arbitrary words" makes a fine example -- and set those words down AS YOUR FIRST LINE.

Obviously, once you're finished with your draft you're free to change these words, maybe remove them altogether like the scaffolding of a finished building. You're the boss of your poem. Sometimes, just for the fun of it, I'll write on the blackboard whatever folks are willing to blurt out in the classroom and I'll say "choose one of these statements for your first line." Or I'll put down a choice of lines from some poems already published (in the long run the new poet drops such borrowings, but they function nicely for starters).

Example: choose one of these as a first line.

Hey, not so fast, I don't understand

You mean I should just write anything at all? 


I can't think of a word to say

I'm sorry
 I was late to class

Or one of these:

Hold, hold it tight

She bangs the door 


Bedded in the new leaves 


They're losing the ways

The first set comes from mutterings in a classroom. The second adapts the third lines of four poems in Writing Yourself Home. 
Now, rapidly, follow up on your chosen first line, let 'er roll, this is only a DRAFT, a try to see what you may have in you to write. Since you're not invested in the starting line -- though something in you picked that one over other options -- why not continue? You can always follow line one with at least a few more. Watch:

They're losing the ways
like a horse with no rider
like a dog with no master 
they're losing the ways

Continue as long as words are willing to roll.

Please don't yet worry about the quality of insight, the lilt, the turn of phrase. Later you can brood over word-choice, rhythm, symbol, cutting away the dead parts, making changes, rearranging, developing ideas. Now you simply want to keep going. Continuing will lead you somewhere, maybe to tears, to surprise if you're lucky. But those new to this "rolling on" will usually go dry, often rather soon. You'll find you're slowing down, through a disinclination or inability to go any further. Aha, now comes tricky step two of the exercise.

Step two: take one of the first lines you didn't choose -- or any line at all! -- and jot it at the bottom of the page.

Continue developing what you've written so far with the intent to finish on the newly chosen last line while making some kind of sense.

See what you're doing here in step two? You're combining the arbitrary -- even the zany -- with a degree of meaningfulness. Step two of the exercise wants to lead you to the exploratory work of "thinking like a poet" by forging connecting links to bring this little ticking machine of a poem to a halt with a sense of closure on just the arbitrary last line you've chosen.

Now it's time to look the page over and throw away everything not to your liking. You may be left with only a line, a phrase, that sings, that you find truly interesting, or you may have tricked yourself into a whole sequence displaying that quality of especially fresh and moving language we call poetry. (Once, doing this exercise, I crossed out all but two words before I started again.)

You may want to begin a second draft attempting to weave together the lines you like from draft number one with  subject matter the exercise may have helped you find. Writing a poem is a voyage of discovery. In fact, supplying your own first and last lines in future will provide a method of composition that could keep you writing poems for a lifetime.

Barry Spacks

Excerpted from Writing Yourself Home

Poetry Writing Links

Barry Spacks Poetry Site

This Poetry: A Practical Guide to Writing Poetry  http://www.thispoetry.com/
John Hewitt's Poetry Writing Tips: http://www.poewar.com/articles/poetrytips.htm
The Poetry Writing Assistant: http://wwwtep.ucsd.edu/students/Davis/poetry-writing.html
Writing & Poetry Resources Page: http://wkweb5.cableinet.co.uk/linsden/wplinks.html