How to write a poem

1. Find the core of the poem

Somewhere in a first draft there is usually one line, or one image, that the rest is circling.

Find it, and the poem gets easier: everything else can be judged against whether it serves that centre or merely surrounds it.

It is rarely the first line you wrote. It is often the one you would keep if you had to throw away the rest.

2. Replace explanation with experience where you can

A poem that says I was afraid asks the reader to take that on trust. A poem that shows the hand not steady on the door handle does not have to.

This is among the oldest advice in the craft, and still among the most useful. Ezra Pound put it as a rule in 1913: go in fear of abstractions, and use no word that does not contribute to the presentation.

It is not an absolute. A stated abstraction can land hard when everything around it is concrete — which is precisely why it stops working when everything is.

3. Listen to the words as much as you read them

Read the draft aloud. Sound carries meaning that the eye skips: a run of hard consonants slows a line, an open vowel opens it, a cluster of stressed syllables makes it heavy.

You do not need to name the devices to use them. You need to hear whether the line sounds like what it says.

4. Watch the rhythm and the line length

Even in free verse, line length does something.

Short lines can quicken or cut the breath. A long line spills. A regular structure sets an expectation that a single break then makes visible.

English metre is accentual-syllabic: it counts feet, groups of stressed and unstressed syllables. An iambic pentameter — five weak-strong feet, ten syllables — is the line Shakespeare's sonnets and most English blank verse are built on. Paul Fussell makes the point that its interest lies in the departures: a metre nobody varies stops being heard.

The syllable counter helps you compare lines. The measurement is an observation, not a grade.

A line unlike the others is not automatically a problem. The question is whether the difference produces the effect you want.

An irregularity you have seen is an effect. One you have not is an accident.

5. Treat rhyme as a possibility, not an obligation

Rhyme can structure a poem, create an echo, reinforce an idea or produce surprise. It can also imprison the text if every line is written only to reach its last sound.

Look first at what the passage has to accomplish, then explore the possible rhymes — including imperfect ones, internal echoes and repeated sounds.

Full rhyme is not the only kind. Emily Dickinson built most of her work on slant rhyme; the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics also distinguishes rich rhyme, where the consonant before the stressed vowel matches too — light and delight.

The rhyming dictionary sits beside the text so options stay in context. See also Ilena for poets.

6. Look for the right word, then question it

One word can change the temperature of a poem.

Compare synonyms. Read the different senses. Try the antonym even when you know you will not keep it. Ask what the word suggests beyond what it literally means.

A historical dictionary helps more than a thesaurus here: the Oxford English Dictionary gives a word's attested uses with their dates, which is where its connotations come from — and no synonym list reports those.

This is not about making the vocabulary harder. The simplest word is often the most precise. The point is to choose rather than accept the first arrival.

7. Rewrite as part of the writing

Rewriting is not repair work on a bad draft. It is the work.

Remove a line and reread. Move an image. Cut an explanation. Try a more concrete word. Change a line's length. Compare two endings.

Then let it rest. Coming back after a few hours or days, you read more like a reader and less like the person who remembers what they meant.

Keeping several versions is what makes that experiment cheap: no change has to be irreversible.