Poetry is included here because I think all writers should read poems, and because attempting to write poems can help you write better prose. A screenwriter once told me he wrote and studied poetry to help tighten and concentrate his dialog.

Poetry can teach you to cut to the chase, take leaps forward and then loop back. You can get out of the trap of writing linear prose from A to Z. You can use metaphor or write plain stark images. You can discover the power of a single word or image in poetry. Poetry can make you pay better attention. I don’t mean this to sound like poetry is some kind of a cure-all New Age fix for creative writers – I just want you to give poetry a chance because a good poem can also change your life.

If you were like me, you loathed poetry in school. It was the literary equivalent of spinach. I didn’t get it. Poetry made me feel stupid. Then in my first creative writing class I had a poet for a teacher, Norma Almquist, who was so passionate about poetry that it was contagious. (Norma had such a profound effect on me as a teacher that I still send her my manuscripts for comments thirty years after taking her courses.) In her class I discovered contemporary poets I loved: Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Theodore Roethke, Lucille Clifton, Gary Snyder. I still love those poets and add new loves every year. (See the reading list for poetry.)

Read enough poetry and you’ll find one that will knock your socks off. Who could resist Suzanne Lummis’s “The Regular Nice Guys” which was inspired by a remark from a friend (“We need to meet some new men but there’s nobody around except all these regular nice guys.”)? It begins with the line, So you’re in this elevator, right?

Just the titles of Anne Carson’s poems: “Here’s Our Clean Business Now Let’s Go Down The Hall To The Black Room Where I Make My Real Money” or “Do You Ever Dream Poor Court-Bankrupt Outwitted And Lost Of Terrible Little Holes All Over Everything What Do These Dreams Mean?” could send you racing to the nearest book store. And “Introduction to Poetry” by Billy Collins should be required reading in any class that goes near a poem.

“Poems allow us to savor a single image, a single phrase….It slows you down to read a poem. You read it more than one time….And we need that slow experience with words.” – Naomi Shihab Nye

Write:

Choose a material object you own – table, ring, fridge whatever – and write a poem about it. Begin each line with the name of the object you’ve chosen and write something factual about it. Don’t write about feelings. The accumulation of specific detail is what will give it power. This exercise was inspired by Raymond Carver’s poem “The Car”, which is the least “poetic” poem you’ll ever read. The first forty lines all begin with the words “The car..” and go on to describe one aspect of it (no back seat, torn front seat, blown head-gasket etc.)

Read:

Raymond Carver, Ultramarine
Billy Collins, Sailing Alone Around the Room
Suzanne Lummis, In Danger
Anne Carson, The Beauty of the Husband