How to write poetry.

During a recent trip to the library I decided to look for a book on how to write poetry. Although I consider myself skilled at writing poetry I couldn’t help wonder if there’s anything I miss when writing my poems. A search in the library’s online catalog led me to the children’s section where I found a book entitled How To Write Poetry from Scholastic.

Although this book was intended for young readers, I still found the book informative. My main reason for checking it out in the first place was to explore the various forms of poetry, and this book easily satisfied that curiosity. There are list poems where you simply list words related to the subject, poems of address for speaking with ordinary everyday objects as if they were listening to you, and there are persona poems that see the world from a certain object’s point of view. Reading about these types of poems gave me ideas of future poems of my own. I can’t wait to write them and will definitely share them here.

And of course there’s the essential advice for crafting your words so they render works of art in your reader’s mind. Throughout the book are words of advice from other poets which I found helpful as well.

It’s good there are books like this for kids. If they start on their poetry while they’re young, who knows what literary masterpieces they’ll create when they grow up.