Young Writers Society

Reading the discussion in How do we review/critique poetry objectively? made me wonder what people thought about this.

I know that most of you will probably read the subject and shout "there are none" in the thread, but I'd like to challenge you to answer this question. They say that in poetry you can "break the rules" so what are those rules that we can break? If there are no rules, then we shouldn't be able to break anything.

That being said, the real thing I want to discuss is actually your personal rules with which you write a poem. I want to explore style more than standardizations in poetry and talk about the differences we have, or why we have some of these rules.



To start us off, I'll talk about my rules for my poems.

1) It has to be aimed at being clear and conveying the message I want.
- Basically if I ask someone "what is this poem about" I want to hear what I meant it to be about. I wrote this one poem called "Puzzle" a long time ago in which I was making a point, but I was trying to make a jigsaw to put it together, and after that point, I really hated that sort of poem because I had way too much going on, too many points that all just made a jumbled heap rather than a pretty picture.

2) It has to be about something.
- I like it when my poems are more than just pretty words put together. I want it to convey either an emotion or a message/thought. That could be basically anything, but I need my poems to be about either an event a subject, or a thought that I'm having. It still leaves me open because my poem can simply be about what I saw/see, but it also gives me direction so that I don't go all over the place.

3) It has to pass the "you're not the boss of me" test.
- Awhile ago I started noticing preachiness in poetry and I really started disliking it so I check my poems to make sure they're not talking about what you should do, or why you should do it, but conveying the messages about me rather than you. It makes my poems less confrontational, and I can still talk about my opinions on things by changing "you" to "I" to provide self-ridicule rather than ridicule of others.

4) Follow the punctuation and capitalization set the poem needs.
- For me, punctuation and capitalization is about subject, so I have sets of different subjects or feelings which correspond with different punctuation and capitalization styles. For instance, if I'm writing a moody poem, I'd definitely use no capitalization and no punctuation. If I'm writing a poem about coming out of something like a meditation, or from one state of being to another, then I would combine punctuation and capitalization changes to indicate which one is more or less strict.

Those are really the basic ones that I can think of off the top of my head. What are yours?

I have a couple of things that I do while writing poetry, so I'm kind of going to be describing my process as well. I start off with some scribbles of imagery that I usually write in my notebook throughout the week or anything of that sort and then begin to expand on that. I don't usually have a theme or a thing that my poetry is about right off the bat, nor do I completely have one. I like to base my poetry off imagery and then I like the idea of interpretation with the reader figuring out parts of the poem on their own, and not everything being said blatantly.

I keep going through drafts until I'm happy with what I have and by then it's gone from scribbles to something more narrowed down since I have trouble keeping myself on one image or topic. I like to add on and edit as I go from the first draft and usually don't actually get an ending until I've gone through a lot of editing for the rest of it. For punctuation and capitalization, I usually use punctuation, but it depends on what kind of tone I want to imbue for capitalization, such as if the poem is more soft-spoken, I won't use capital letters.


Another thing that I usually take into account early on is the structure of the poem, is it regular? Does it use white space? Is it a prose-poem? I usually like to change it up, but I think I work best when using white space as it often adds something to the poem for me. I rarely write structured poetry itself, but when I do, I usually approach it in a different way than I do normally. I treat it differently and I kind of put more restrictions on myself and try to focus more on a topic that imagery off-shoots from and I keep building around that. I like having space to interpret since I think the reader themselves and how they take the poem is one of the more important things when it comes to poetry because everyone will perceive it differently.

So if you had to write "rules" what would they be @Kaos?

I'll keep them short, but here we go:

1.) Don't use concrete themes--I don't like having one particular interpretation that the reader has to follow.

2.) Edit until refined--I never call a poem done without editing it at /least/ twice, but that also depends on the length.

3.) Make something that reflects my current emotional state--I may not use themes but I do use whatever I'm feeling or the images that happen to pop up in my head.

4.) Write down any images that pop up in my head at random to scribble them down for later. This is kind of the start of the process so really it should be at the beginning, but eh.

5.) I'm always trying to improve when I'm writing, so I try and hone in and focus on the problems I've been having with my poetry, such as flow or cohesiveness, two that I have or have had in the past.

1) The first rule of poetry is not to talk about poetry.

2) The second rule of poetry is that there are no rules.


In all seriousness, the value of poetry is that it is not prosaic. Rules, on the other hand, are almost always prosaic. I can't see how poetry would have any rules then. Mostly it would be defined by what it's not. Prose is a result, poetry is a process, I guess.

To me, poetry can definitely have rules because as soon as you set a standard, or create an expectation, you have the basics of a rule.

What are rules but expected conduct to do, or not to do. In a classroom, it is expected behaviors, and in poetry it's the same way.

Once you start writing a poem in a rhymed form, it becomes awkward to suddenly break out of that without consciously acknowledging that you're breaking your own rule of this being a rhymed poem.

Do you agree or disagree @Wunderbar

My rules are easy to follow.

Punctuation is a Must
I write stories first before poems, so punctuation is easily something that is compulsory in my poems. Unless I use No Capitalization style, I will not abandon punctuations no matter how good the poem looks like without them.

Message Should Be Educational
This rule is quite loose. If you feel like using poetry to express your emotions, abandon this rule since it requires logic and reason. There are too many emotional poems out there that they become a depressing genre. Cutting, suicidal, those frustrating themes have been overused when other social themes can be put in the middle of the stage. Examples of educational poems are like ones that have social commentary in them.

And that is it. I am quite lawless when it comes to writing poetry.