Writing Poetry As A Therapeutic Practice

Think of each poem that you write as practice. Every poem that you write benefits from the poems that you've written prior to this one. Poetry writing is a therapeutic exercise.The practice of writing poetry helps us smooth out the rougher edges of our character, helps us pull down the masks we wear to show the world the way we think it wants us to be. Writing poetry helps us get closer to finding out who we really are.

Writing poetry can also serve as a form of permanent record, something to look back on to recognize that changes have been made, that we've changed, that we've grown. In the same way that we build up a photo album, we can build up a poetry album of snapshots of our emotions and look back with fondness or dread at the way we used to be.

Some psychologists believe that the rhythms of poetry stimulate the part of the brain which governs emotions and that the act of writing these emotions down on the page brings a kind of order and control back into the writers life.

In poetry we are encouraged to be original, in fact it is probably a rule for good poetry. We are encouraged to not spell it out but rather to just suggest it and this is in someway helpful. Metaphors are used with great effect in poetry and you can hide a lot of pain inside a metaphor To quote the poet Sage Cohen: "In a culture where we like things black and white, right and wrong, poetry says YES. What if there were no right or wrong - only poetry? What if everything we could possibly dream up were acceptable? fabulous? enough? Poetry can be your own personal oasis of invention, where you can do no wrong”.

As poets or aspiring poets we need to first calm down and then to trust our own voice. There is poetry to be found in the most minute and mundane of thing. It is the awareness of the world around us and the writing or reporting of that awareness that is so important. Poetry is not, nor should it be an exclusive form available to a select few, but instead belongs to us all and is within us all. We can all participate in a compassionate dance of poetrymaking. And the place to begin is where you are!

How To Memorize Poetry

How To Memorize A Poem by J J Hayes

For a while in my career I was known as the person who could perform from memory poems of any length. On two days notice for instance I was able to perform, in its entirety, Allen Ginsberg's "Howl." That performance took 45 minutes! People thought I had some sort of amazing memory. In fact the secret was this almost mechanical technique which allowed me to commit huge amounts of text to memory. If what you want to memorize is long the process can be a grind and tests your commitment to the project. But for shorter works it is amazingly quick and easy.

Step One: Read the poem to yourself (not outloud)

Step Two: Now read only the first line of the poem outloud. Take your eyes from the page and immediately, outloud, say the line again. Glance quickly to make sure you got it right. If you made a mistake, do it over. Now move on to the second line and repeat the procedure- one outloud reading followed by one outloud recitation of the line from memory. Do this for every line in the poem (in order, I guess it goes without saying).

Step Three: Once you have completed going through the poem, go back to the beginning. This time read outloud the first two lines, look away and repeat them outloud. Check briefly that you got it right. If you make a mistake do it over. Now move on to the next two lines and so forth going through the poem two lines at a time.

Steps Four thru Seven: Repeat the process three lines at a time, then 4 lines at a time, then 5 and then 6. I have found that by the 6th pass, no matter how long or short the poem, you will have the whole thing committed to memory. At some point in this process you will find that you are able to recite the whole poem without hardly a glance at the poem. I recommend doing all six passes even if you already seem to have the poem down before then.

Step Eight: Recite the whole poem, preferably just before you go to bed at night.

Step Nine (IMPORTANT): Stop thinking about the poem and just sleep on it. Your sleeping mind is very important for memory- it sort of saves to your brains harddrive what has been floating around in its RAM while it worked through the poem.

The next day you should find (perhaps with a little glance at the first line of the poem to kidkstart your memory) that you can recite the whole poem. Now recite the poem once more, to yourself with meaning! Depending on when you want to perform the poem you may want to recite it once a day or every couple of days before your performance. You have mechanically memorized the text, now is your opportunity to explore the poem and all its hidden meanings and connections without needing the text in front of you.

Note: This memory may fade over time, if you do not give it a run through every so often. I couldn't recite "Howl' straight through now if you asked me to. Give me a day or two.

The author J.J. Hayes gives us a good take on what works for him in memorizing poetry.
Poertyguy

How To Write A Love Poem

When we set about to write a poem about
love or the ones we love, the temptation is
to write with sentimentality which has a tendency
to make the poem sound soppy and insincere.
One way to avoid this and to make use of the
romantic is for the writer to use distance.
Distancing creates romance and also forces
objectivity onto the writer.

To write about how special someone usually
sounds sentimental, but if the writer compares the
person to something else they prevent the risk of
soppyness (is that a word?).
One of Shakespeares more famous
sonnets starts with this very idea:
..' shall I compare thee to a summers day.'

Below is a feeble attempt of mine to show how
this effect might be used in a love poem for a lover
who likes gardening.

You are
The buds of springs flowers
Without you Im
A lonely blade
Growing between rocks
Prickly as a
Cactus, growing in
The desert
You are the perfect
Passiflora
Around you I bloom
Lets worship Spring Glory
Hiding together under
Cover of Squirreltail Grass
Growing our fruits
Of passion
(I did warn you it would be a feeble attempt!)

Ok. Your turn to write a poem now.
Choose someone or something you are fond of.
Choose a subject you know something about
and mix them together in the above fashion.

As a young boy I can remember my father
and two brother walking and riding our
bikes about an hour away from our home
to fish the richly populated waters of a large lake.

If I was to construct a poem about how
much I loved my now dead father. It would
say much more about our relationship if I
wrote about 'the summer days we fished the
lake together' or if I was to write about my love
for my mother I could write about the 'wonderful
aromas and tastes of her roasted dinners' instead
of 'I love you mother'.

T.S. Elliot called this 'objective correlative'
To quote Elliot:
'The only way of expressing emotion in the form of
art is by finding and 'objective correlative': in other
words a set of objects...which shall be the formula
for that particular emotion'...
These objects, the bike ride, the fishing, lake, the roast
dinners stand for the emotions the poem is about.

Ok . Your turn again .. construct a poem around
a memory of someone you love or are fond of.
Dont write about your feelings like 'I love you Dad'
instead let the facts be a metaphor for the feelings.