Becoming a Wordsmith: 4 Fundamentals for Writing Poetry

Becoming a Wordsmith: 4 Fundamentals for Writing Poetry

Raymond Quattlebaum is a passionate poet who is best known for his emotional and magnificent poems that are mostly about love and about God. His love for poetry began during the third grade when he wrote a poem for his teacher, Mrs. Albert, who in turn loved Raymond Quattlebaum’s poems so much that she published them in the school newspaper. For Raymond Quattlebaum, writing poems brought him pure joy and pushed him to write even more as time went on.

Today, Raymond Quattlebaum continues to write as much poetry as he can. He collects his beautiful poems together and put them in books. His most recent book, The Color of Love, is a collection of romantic poems that demonstrate how love is the most powerful emotion in the universe and how God loves His people unconditionally. If you wish to be as excellent of a poet as Raymond Quattlebaum, then you need to keep reading because this article briefly discusses below some of the fundamental things that you should learn to become a full-blown wordsmith.

Poetic devices should be used carefully

Poetic devices are the backbone of poetry. They are the tools used by poets to create an emotion, mood, rhythm, tone, or meaning in poems. To put it differently, they enrich and sophisticate poems to distinguish them from other forms of literature. The most common poetic devices include repetition, alliteration, similes, metaphor, personification, hyperbole, and more.

Poetic devices are a great way to add impact to your poem. However, in order to really sophisticate your work of poetry, you need to use these poetic devices carefully. Avoid overusing them as much as possible. Otherwise, your poem will sound ridiculous. Remember, poetic devices are just like spices – they are great in moderation, but overpowering if overused.

A poem does not always need to rhyme

A popular belief among non-poetry enthusiasts is that every poem should rhyme. Although rhyming is common in poetry, the previous statement is not necessarily true. While the traditional view of formal poetry adheres to a strict rhyming scheme, the more recent and popular style of poetry writing – free verse writing – eschews rhyming scheme altogether and provides poets with the creative freedom to play with words.

If you wish to be more creative and free when it comes to your poetry, do not focus so much on producing rhymes. Instead, concentrate your energy and creativity on coming up with and combining words that paint a vivid picture of your emotions. Nonetheless, you can still work around rhymes if you think that you are more of a traditional poet.

A poem should be bare and honest

One of the main goals of poetry writing is to induce certain emotions among people, particularly the readers or listeners. For some people, this can be difficult given that words need to be immensely particular to convey the right message and generate the right feelings. In other words, it can be hard to put some emotions in your poem when you cannot even find the right words to write.

One of the simplest and most effective solutions to this challenge in poetry writing is to be as bare and honest as you can be in your poem. This basically means that you should not sugarcoat your poetry according to what the readers or listeners simply want to read or listen to. Write whatever it is that you feel like writing. As Kevin Casper pointed out: one essential rule in poetry is that if you are not honest with yourself in your poems, then no one else is going to feel anything genuine and authentic when they read your work.

A poet should not be afraid to break the rules

Poetry is anarchy. There are no certain laws that limit you from writing poetry in any way you want. The use of poetic devices, rhyming, and such other things are by no means the laws of poetry. Although it is important to know about them and use them from time to time, you are not required to adhere strictly to their usage.

In poetry, you do not need to follow the rules. You are only demanded to learn about them so you can break them. Do not be afraid to deviate from the rules and write according to what your heart tells you. At the end of the day, people read or listen to your poems not because your poems are technically perfect, but because they feel such strong emotions and receive such powerful messages when they do. Bottom-line is: poetry is an expression. Express yourself in your poems as much as you want, just like what Raymond Quattlebaum does.