Writing Poetry: From Childhood Limericks to Published Works
I’ve always had an interest in poetry even though much of my life I’ve tried to figure out 1) what it is and 2) three-quarters of the time trying to figure out what deliberately abstruse poets are trying to say, if indeed they are trying to say anything other than attempt to shout their brilliance (non-brilliance) and, in this latter thought, wondering if I should be more like them or write what I want to write? I’ll give you the answer to this last question now: write what you want to write.
My first attempt at poetry was silly things as a kid. When I discovered double-entendre limericks, I went all nuts with those. I wrote two books mimicking Dr. Suess by probably about eight, complete with Suess-like illustrations. Fortunately, I still have those two one-of-a-kind books. Unfortunately, I’ve lost over the years all my childish, dirty lyrics that probably all start with “There was a man/woman from…” I doubt they were very original. The Suess-derivative, though, does still read well. I’m sort of proud of my younger self.
By junior high and high school, I had fallen in love (numerous times, usually weekly with someone new), and I was writing about one to two poems per day. I’d love to say they were on par with Shakespearean sonnets, but alas and alack, they were on par with early English folk balladeers. They rhymed, they singsonged, but they were original. The meter wasn’t there as maybe Chaucer would have liked, and the iambic pentameter was accidental when it happened, but they were sincere, and the girls I dated long-term seemed to love them because they thought they were all about them (though some were about my dog).
By sixteen, I began writing music and performing songs. These, of course, were rhymed, had a beat, and a definite rhythm. Between sixteen and eighteen, I had written over three hundred accompanied by piano, all still on cassette tapes, though I no longer have a cassette tape player to share these beautiful compositions with my kids. It’s probably best if I don’t hear them now because I’d bet they are better in my memory than in actuality.
When I went to college, I took poetry classes, and frankly, I’m not sure if the professors knew what they were talking about. I suspect they didn’t because they sounded like they were regurgitating something they might have learned in some trendy Ph.D. program sometime in their youth and hadn’t had an original personal thought since. As a poet, I grew despondent. No matter how hard I tried, I could not make my poetry so obscure that no one knew what the hell I was talking about. My poetry made sense to all who read it; left to my own devices rather than the professor’s charity, I might have failed all my poetry courses.
As many of you know, I dropped out of college at the suggestion of one of my English professors, Arlie Herron, whom I count as one of my greatest mentors. (I also dropped out of school at the end of seventh grade. If you don’t know that story, that’s the subject of a different post; we’re talking poetry right here.)
So, I dropped out of college and badly needed cash because I was sometimes living in my car, so I went back to poetry. (I know, right? Because poetry is so lucrative.) I wrote a poem and sent it in to see if someone would publish it and pay me for it, and, crazy as it was, the poem was accepted, and I got paid a whopping $300 for it—$300 for about fifteen minutes of work. As we do in that situation, I wonder if my abstract professors who didn’t appreciate my verse had ever made $300 in fifteen minutes from the sale of a poem. To my astonishment, the poem has been anthologized a couple of times, which makes the whole thing even crazier.
There is a point in all of this, several points, for those of you who are writers. First, write like crazy with no intention of publishing anything. Learn your style. Write what you feel and what you know. Love the page. Love the verse. Second, broaden your mind and maybe think of putting some of your poetry to music as I did and, as I have, sell those songs (I’ve been in the Top 10 in some markets with rhyming songs I’ve written, songs that others have recorded). Thirdly, study those poems that make absolutely no sense to you but that the Ph.D.s love. One of two things will happen. You will find your tribe, and you can write poetry no one understands and find yourself in anthologies or, like me, you can see what you don’t like (because you’re not sure, like me, that you are smart enough to get it) and you’ll go back to your roots of what you can write. And, lastly and fourthly, when you’ve written for a good while (and you’ll know how long that time is), try to get yourself published. Since that initial poem I published, I have made a good amount of money for a poet (along with a stack of delightfully received contributor copies). Who would have thought you could make money from writing poetry? You can.
I tell my story to inspire you to try poetry and assure you that you are not alone; other sane people are writing poetry, and some of us are even getting paid for it. Writing poetry will help your fiction and nonfiction writing tremendously because it teaches you to describe, get to the heart of the matter quickly, and fill the sentence with emotion that moves the reader, all things you can transfer to your other writing. And, who knows, if you are good enough at it, you may find you can add a few dollars to your bank account, a few books of anthologies with your poems included to your shelf, quite a few chapbooks and contributor copies you pick up along the way, and even a few awards, including some physical trophies that came with no money but seemed to mean something because it seemed like other people valued my work. Take a moment. Put your hand to the till and write a few lines. See what happens. You’ve read my journey. I think it turned out okay. Now, let’s hear yours.
And, also to answer your burning question, can you write poetry in meter and poetry that rhymes? Drum roll. The answer is yes. You can write whatever you want. It’s your poetry and your style. Be you.
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