Young Writers Society

Is there something you notice you do often in poems you write? Certain grammatical patterns, or a preference for certain groups of imagery? Tell us here!

From my perspective, though I may not be very accurate inspecting my own work, I tend to think my poetic style is very variable. There are some tendencies though.

1. Sentence case: Though I sometimes use all small letters, those tend to be poems I recognise as having a voice *distinctly* different from what I'd call mine, so I mark that in the capitalisation. My main way to capitalise is to just use sentence casing in poems, for example:

The half-moon cove
and its soft sand-beds
waited with the waves.

2. Modality: I lean towards writing about certainties ('is', 'are', 'will' etc.) and normatives ('must be', 'should'). I also like to think about poetry in imperative mood as being part of my specialties though that may just be a wishful fantasy. Some evidence for this:

Pale yellow grains made
an unexpected stir.

(From the same poem as above, a statement-type line.)

The ixora woman left only that window open
which was facing the hanging bridge where
the fast-moving wing flaps resounded in the silent night
and someone would be returning
from the day’s patrol,
but returning where?

to the round cork floor, and the airy sound
it made when one walked,
the smell of a candle burning,
the crisp turn of pages,
the velvet-clad back.

(Asked a question, then answered it myself.)

The Purple Instructions and Instructions for Visiting the Tree Café are full of imperatives, 'should's and 'will's and both have the word 'Instructions' in them.

Talking to shop-keep in his own language,
You don’t win a prize for trying too hard.

(And this is another one from 2020. Certainly feels like the speaker is certain, even if the reader doesn't necessarily have to believe them!)

Whoops, sorry, this is getting way longer than initially intended xD tldr; my style includes a direct, sometimes forceful tone, even when the imagery/ narrative is more subtle or deceptive, and I think that's because I use lots of statements *presented* as fact, imperatives, 'should's and 'must's. My poems also tend to resemble prose because of the sentence casing, and maybe they look a little academic/ appealing to authority through that as well

All I know so far is that I like really wordy titles.
"new year or infinity; you choose"
"can i really call her a friend when she's hurting people?'
"knowledge is nothing if i can't feel"
"understanding from a sufferer. worry from a friend."

All quite wordy and I like it.

well what can i say except i like ghosts

i shouldn't compare myself to ghosts,
but maybe i can learn a few things from them.

i told you many things, about the time
i thought i could coexist with ghosts.

i told my ghosts about you
and they agreed you were beautiful.

and i like talking about family, sometimes my own

i thought he was
perfect because he was just like his father.

i am the last living man in my family if you
don't count my father (he disowned me long before
i knew what that word meant.)

i was instead raised in the time of unreliable fathers
& mothers who wanted sons but were cursed with daughters.

i also like to explore my identity and how it has changed me

i treat myself like a disease
so that i can pretend i am cured.

i was more woman than human.
i learned this at 11 years old.

i wanted to be something like him,
and it was frightening.

Ooh! This looks really fun! Let’s see…

I’ve always been partial to repetition, especially refrains. Even when writing prose poetry or a free-verse, I tend to give myself a refrain. You can see that in my poem Selfish vs. Selfless. ^^

——

I tend to use really abstract figurative language for the vibes.

Like my soul is ancient,
and stuck in thrift store bones.

I’m finally trimming my family tree;

And hope is inviting Death to tea
Maybe happiness is a weed, pushing through the cracks of the sidewalk
Doused with herbicide because it doesn’t look how we want

——

As for common themes, I often write internal stream of consciousness poems where it’s just the narrator thinking on the page.

There is something wrong with me
I am trapped by imperfection
All of the prophets and teachers say so

I am not sad, not mourning, not trembling in fear. I am angry. My blood is boiling and the steam is coming out of my throat.

I don’t deserve this.
I don’t deserve love
or simple echoing peace.
I am pathetic,
worth less than chalk dust.
You shouldn’t love me.

These are all so interesting to read! And I love this question - because at some point a person needs to know when they're being repetitious and then on the other hand I think it is good for a poet to cultivate a style - and it's tricky to avoid repetition or work on having a "poetic voice" if you're not sure how you write. :]

Form
> superfluous conjunctions, especially at the beginning or end of lines, specifically I leaned into this after taking a course called "Hebrew Poetry" in which I learned that the Hebrew conjunction "vav" especially within poetry often functions as much more than just a joining of two sentence parts - but has like 10 different functions - one being a pointer to rhetorical parallelism. An "And" can be a bullet point, can be a red circle around a phrase, can be an underline, can be an equal sign. This was very helpful for me, because in English I feel like we often try to eliminate "unnecessary" conjunctions and I was at least taught to avoid saying things like "I like cake and donuts and also ice cream" even if that's really what you mean. Anywho ever since that class - I've decided that I'm going to put as many conjunctions as I think should be in my poems without asking myself what my English teachers might try to edit out.

> I tend towards lowercased letters unless there is a good reason to capitalize them. And I stay away from end punctuation usually unless there is a reason to use it. I like using semi-colons incorrectly as "bolder commas" and I like using commas as breaths too. And if I feel a thought would be better captures as a giant run-on sentence, I'm not afraid of that. Often a whole stanza will be one "sentence". I like the ideas of lists that show some personality or seem excessive. A list poem is not a grocery list, but a way of making sense of thinking thoroughly through a particular topic.

> Sometimes I like to hyphenate strange word pairings to create a new word, and you're more likely to see me ending a line with a dash than an ellipses.

> I also like to play with formatting and especially in NaPo I like to consider that the way a poem is placed or decorated or presented on the page is as much poetry as the words used. To this end, I am a firm believer that poems don't have to be able to be read left-to-right and once in a while I'll play with a shape poem that illustrates that.

> I tend to write poems as either one stanza or multiple stanzas that parallel each other in some way. I like thematic or formatting echoes (ie. if you begin with a string in stanza one, why not end with that string tied in a knot in stanza 2) I also like to do list poems where in the first sentence or two I set up a premise that may seem nonsensical and then explore that indirectly in the following stanzas (ie. "My summer is a bucket-list" or "this is an account of all my dreams" or "Here's how you weave a basket")

---

Themes: Nostalgia, Connectedness, Homesickness, Realization, Memory, Story, Family, Love / Heart-ache, Identity, Difficulty letting-go / Can't escape or Can't return, Irony, Echoes.

Some words I'd like to describe my poetic voice - brooding and reminiscent.

Imagery: Water (specifically drowning, rivers, boats, and fish), Fire, Birds, String, Origami, Trees, "Home," Landscape, Artifacts, Time, Relatives, Returning, Moving, Stars, Breathing, Maps.

Other:
> I used to write about 75% of my poems as an "I" addressed to or talking about a "you" - the you is sometimes presented as a romantic interest, but might be a paternal person, another sense of self, or a metaphor for something else. I've branched away from this in recent years but it still is a common reoccurring theme. And I usually do have a strong "I" / first person voice in my poetry.

> I'll often use a spiritual or Biblical allusion in my poetry - in particular I like using the story of Adam and Eve (creation from dust, original sin, eating the forbidden fruit, inheritance of sin).

> One of my poetry collections "monthly musings" is all about personifying the months, and I usually tend to give the months and planets, and trees and stars feminine pronouns if I'm personifying them.

A typical poem structure for me may go something like...

I think the sky is a large hollow bird.

Once I saw the sky [memory about the sky]
[stanza linked with a conjunction] -

[memory informs current reflection]
[stanza linked with a conjunction]

[Personifying the bird for ~interest~]
[stanza linked with a conjunction]

[This means something about me].
But this is how things are.

Some Typical alliyah lines ~

i thought by now this list would be new; and yet
here we are again, and again, and again.

only empty space

i am a river
carved into the earth
a thousand generations
before i was born

boundless

if i could find that stream, if i made it there perhaps some sense of natal homing would let me swim from there back to the river across the plains.

everything i brought from home

all my memory is landscaped with home

everything i carry home

^ Those lines would all make a nice poem together actually!

May add more thoughts later! But that's all I have for now!