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  • 15 Poems
    • 1: Talk to Animals (and Stars)
    • 2: Shift Perspectives
    • 3: Take a Snapshot
    • 4: Use These Words
    • 5: Write a One-Sentence Poem
    • 6: Write a No-Sentence Poem
    • 7: Tap Your Inner Language
    • 8: Tell a Story
    • 9: Collect Fabulous Realities
    • 10: Write a "how to" Poem
    • 11: Begin, "When I . . .
    • 12: Get Deductive
    • 13: Start With an Epigraph
    • 14: Follow a Metaphor
    • 15: Meditate
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by Chuck Guilford

 

You will never be alone
with a poet in your pocket.

      -- John Adams

 

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Poetry thrives online. There is no better place to publish your poems if you want them to be widely read.

Register and log in to create a personal blog where you can publish and discuss poems with other Poetryexpress members. 

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  • Stanza Breaks
  • Rhythm and Meter
  • Poem #1: Talk to Animals (and Stars)
  • 15 Poems You Can Write Now
  • Poem #5: Write a One-Sentence Poem

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This poem will be short, of course, maybe a quick observation, a moment preserved, as in this no-sentence poem by Ezra Pound:

In a Station of the Metro

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

Or maybe an apostrophe like H. D.'s "The Pool":

The Pool

Are you alive?
I touch you.
You quiver like a sea-fish.
I cover you with my net.
What are you—banded one?

Read more: Share It On Social Media

It might as well be spring . . .

or maybe it is, so many love poems keep appearing in the blogs. Love poems are some of the hardest poems to write, or so claimed W. H. Auden. Here are a few classics that have inspired poets and lovers over the years:

  • The Passionate Shepherd to His Love by Christopher Marlowe
  • The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd by Sir Walter Ralegh
  • somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond by e. e. cummings
  • To the March Wind by Chuck Guilford
  • Let me not to the marriage of true minds by William Shakespeare
  • The Definition of Love by Andrew Marvell
  • What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why by Edna St. Vincent Millay
  • The Buried Life by Matthew Arnold
  • A Birthday by Christina Rossetti
  • How Do I Love Thee? by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
  • Wild Nights — Wild Nights! by Emily Dickinson
  • When You Are Old by W. B. Yeats
  • Credo by Matthew Roher

A few suggestions: use concrete, specific images to show your feelings; avoid sing-song "roses are red" type rhyming; try to say something fresh and new that gives readers a new insight — or even a laugh.

 

And check out the following topics:

Poem #2: Shift Perspectives

Write a companion poem to the apostrophe you wrote for Poem 1, this time writing from the perspective of whomever or whatever you addressed the first time.

You may choose not to reveal the speaker's identity. That is, if you wrote #1 to an eagle, you would now write from an eagle's point of view, but might not let on that an eagle is the poem's speaker.

Read more ...

Revise Poems

Poetry Response Guidelines
-- the no praise/no blame method
  • Some conversation starters
  • As you discuss, remember
  • A sharing process

Revision means re-seeing — looking again with fresh vision at what you've previously made. And since we're talking poetry, we might also consider "re-auditing" — re-hearing — the words.

Read more ...

Line Breaks

Unlike prose, which wraps freely from paragraph to paragraph, poetry is written in lines, which break in definite spots selected by the poet. Because of this, the line is considered a unit of composition, an important factor influencing sound and meaning.

Read more ...

 

   For This Life

Check out this new book-length online poetry collection by Poetryexpress creator Chuck Guilford.

Videos

Meet Online

1. Install the Zoom app on your phone or computer.

2. Create a new meeting and set a meeting time. This could be simply a get-acquainted session, or it could focus on a specific activity or assignment: one of the 15 poems, for instance.

3. Invite others to install Zoom on their phones or computers and join the meeting.

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