ARTICLE
Poetry by the Numbers
Eight shortcuts to writing timeless odes and getting $$$ for it!
Illustration by Paul Hornschemeier
Would you believe me if I told you that you don’t need all those expensive poetry-writing books that everyone is trying to sell you? Well, you don’t! So stop clicking and start reading.
Let’s say you’re the average person who gets up in the morning, reads some poetry with your Honey Nut Cheerios, hops on a jammed subway car with your poetry newspaper folded vertically in half, works from 9 to 5 with only a few poetry breaks in between, and then after a long day comes home to read some inspirational sonnets in the warm glow of your inglenook. You’re tired of being part of the poetry-consuming masses and want to become part of the poetry-producing masses. Familiar? Then this column is for you.
Writing poems is as easy as A-B-B-A (that’s poetry talk, not the Swedish pop supergroup). Whenever you need a kick-start for your poetry, turn to this handy guide of clearly numbered, easy-to-memorize tips. In no time at all, heartwarming cinquains will be coming out your “arse” (as the Brits say).
1. Animals and Your Soul
If you’re like most people, baring your soul is tough, so the first thing you should do is get yourself an avatar from the animal world on which you can project your fears, your loves, and, most importantly, your festering hates. We suggest finding an outcast member of the animal kingdom to represent your soul’s voice. Perhaps start with a lemur. Say what you really want to say, but as a lemur might say it. Everyone will be all “Wow, I’ve never read a poem from a lemur’s perspective before!”
How You Can Use This in Your Real Life
Let’s say you live with six other people in a one-bedroom apartment in a big, dirty city. As an aspiring poet, you should see these people not as roommates but as poetry customers. Soon enough, word will spread about “my crazy roommate who writes these cool animal poems on Post-it notes” (that’s you!). Street cred is the first step to any career in the arts.
Here’s an example to use if your roommates are late paying their part of the cable bill:
On the prairie doth the lemur stalk, stalk, stalk
With its ears so noble and alive,
In April, at I Love the Nineties: Part 7, Ian and Barry did gawk,
gawk, gawk
You guys owe me thirty-four ninety-five (each).
2. Get Thee into a Journal
No matter what your style, true poetry fame is guaranteed to start when you get your work published in any of these popular poetry powerhouses. Go for it—stamps don’t cost much, and e-mail is even cheaper.
- The King of Prussia Review
- Avenue Cool
- Word Crash Quarterly
- Freak Werks
- Readysetwrite
- Stuff from Bob's Wallet
- Butte Review
- Gam Yrteop
- Words for a Big Blue Marble
- Avenue Cool
3. The Heart: Broken, Smashed, Torn, Mutilated, Ripped-from-Body-and-Shown-to-You-While-Still-Pumping, etc.
There is no greater poetry factory within your body than the heart. Sure, the brain is important. And there’s a lot of exciting poetry that starts with your genitals, but historically, you can’t go wrong by letting your heart take the lead.
Tip!
For poetry’s sake, try to date as many people as possible who are not right for you. If you play your cards wrong, your catastrophically heartbreaking loss will be poetry’s gain. And don’t forget, your rebound relationship should be with an agent.
An Example Free for You to Borrow for Inspiration:
It seems like it was just this afternoon that my heart texted you about us
spending the holiday weekend with my parents.
And texted you again.
It seems like it was just this evening that my heart came home to find you
loading up the prophetically named Ford Escape with all your stuff.
And then you were gone.
And now it is just, you know, my heart and me and the
Wii your cousin gave us.
4. Trees, Leaves, Flowers, Forests, and the Like
God made all this nature stuff for us to use in our poetry, so go for it! Don’t let God down!
5. How Ennui Can Be Your Friend
You’re bored with your life. That’s a scientific fact. But now you can take the inner sadness that drives you to the Wendy’s late-night take-out window and turn it into poetry bucks! Do you know what your life is filled with? Ennui, that’s what. Goddamn ennui. Use it. Turn your boring life into poetry, and people will flock to your work to feel better about their own lives.
Quick Example That You Can Put on Your Blog
The best part of my day is when I sit and stare at my backup dog that I can’t think of a name for.
6. Catchy Titles
Many aspiring poets give up because they can’t come up with a decent title for their work. Not you, because now you can plug your ideas into this proven Poetry Title Matrix:
- Throw together any combination of a name, location, event, fear, and symbolic body part: “The Battle Creek Crafts Fair That Haunts Stu Mandelbaum’s Phantom Leg”
- To go postmodern, combine a kitschy TV character with something really heavy: “Boss Hogg Laments the Death of the West”
- Use “On” plus a common occurrence: “On Trying to Grab Sunglasses from Under the Car Seat”
7. Being Brave Through Your Poetry
Who needs the anonymity of the Internet when you have poetry? Tell your supervisor what you really think of him! Admit to your dirty thoughts about Francesca in Marketing! Come out of the closet! If you do it all through your “poetry,” you’re safe under the Law of Poetic License, and no one is allowed to be mad at or disgusted by you. Win-win!
8. Traumatic Experiences – Think!
Don’t let professional psychiatrists erase everything! Every car you slept in as a kid is worth at least three stanzas of an ode, and every soccer-league playoff your parents skipped should be good for a limerick.
And Lastly, for Inspiration . . . Take This Road!
Little-known fact: Bob Frost wrote his famous poem “The Road Not Taken” while working as “the fourth-best cobbler in New England.” However, after that poem hit the streets, he was off to the races, poetry-popularity–wise.
Whether you’re a philosophical shoe repairer or just languishing in accounts receivable, give yourself a pat on the back, because by reading this, you’ve taken your first step toward declaring out loud to strangers: “I’m a poet, you guys!”
More Laughs
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About the Author
Gary Rudoren is the co-author of the McSweeney's book Comedy by the Numbers. He is a teacher/director at the Magnet Theater in New York and an alumnus of the Annoyance Theater in . . .
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COMMENTS (12)
On July 6, 2008 at 4:27 am Tim Barrus wrote:
I love this. Refreshing. Arriving here to be
amused is not what I am used to doing.
Irreverence yes. Buba, you left out one
Big Thing: Lying Through Your Teeth. I
know. I know. Perish the thought, right.
No poet would ever lie. Well, not the ones
who wear ties anyway.
On July 6, 2008 at 12:23 pm Anne Bryant-Hamon wrote:
Too funny! This made my day!
Wow - I'm a poet now!
Thanks.
Anne
On July 6, 2008 at 12:45 pm Rose Kelleher wrote:
This is cute, but as satire it's not very daring. Try aiming your sites a little higher, and maybe I'll be impressed.
On July 7, 2008 at 3:55 pm Jeff wrote:
Like all great satire, there is enough truth here that part of you is sobbing while the rest is laughing.
As an editor, I have read many poets who write like they have taken such advice as this to heart.
One final note, I doubt anyone writing for or affiliated with the Poetry Foundation is sitting at their desk thinking, "Gee, I sure hope Rose Kelleher is impressed by this!"
On July 8, 2008 at 4:27 pm Walter Wordsnot wrote:
every poet worth his ode
knows the poetry dollar code
pours out his heart in 20 lines
making sure the damn thing rhymes
then sends it off to you-know-who
like a million others in the queue
back there comes the glossy letter
well done poet - we never read better -
send us now your handsome check
and we'll put you down for a coffee table set
On July 10, 2008 at 10:43 pm James Finn Garner wrote:
Rose--
Use the proper spelling of "sights" and maybe we'll be impressed.
Good work! But which part of my house is the inglenook again? I hope it's not the liquor cabinet, as do my wife and children.
On July 17, 2008 at 12:15 pm Jennifer Cummins wrote:
With all my life's rich experiences, from 22 hours of brain surgery, to my son being born without a vital part of of his brain (what part don't you need, I quickly thought; like, your appendix), but couldn't come up with an answer, this piece of advice was great. I am writing poetry for children, disabled or not, to encourage literacy and to encourage phonemic awareness, but didn't know where to begin. Thanks so much.
On July 17, 2008 at 10:54 pm Sam Kuraishi wrote:
I gave your advice to my son. He was inspired by it.
When he wrote me the following lines, and with joy, I almost cried. And now, I am discovering my son's talent.
That is what he wrote to me:
I love you my dad (A)
From the bottom of my heart (B)
I don't even feel mad (A)
When you fill the room with fart. (B)
I think it is a good Iambic Tetrameter for a beginner. Next time I am going to teach him all the rules of the triadic stanza and the Loose verses"Versos sueltos."
Go for it son.
On July 18, 2008 at 8:31 pm Frederick Van Kirk wrote:
As Costello once said, "Horses eat their fodder." Here's some for your Canon. Oh Yeah, mudders run in the rain.
Cummings Jokes
I read Cummings jokes writtenwrote
crylaughing up his sleeve.
Congratulating himself. O’ laughing 'pon what critics
(dreary, witty?
critics)
were willing to perceive.
First person commentary
(but first, how heroic of me,
how endearing... ')
Enough! Enough!
Get on with it! Why is that ‘
hanging there solitary?
"I hope they break their teeth wondering!"
Ahem' - throat clearing.
I shall write some garbled muck,
sans juxtaposition in line and meter.
And none shall ever figure out that as a poet
I was - half was... a (cheater?)
I shall write my garbled words, (shaded, guarded words,)
and making sure.
(it fishy smells -- What here? What here?
Oh yes, - of blundering,)
I needed the rhyme.
And as fool’s read it (like the king showing his bare 'flanks")
will fear they're (missing something
in themselves?)
Why should I squirt my veins
into my meanings
why should I bleed my heart
? - ? There, satisfied?
For when I am truthful, truly true,
those that understand my (words better than I?)
blend their time picking their nose
(should I have meant rose?)
(andtoiletstraining at my art?) - Art? Stupid, smart, butt, - oh put...
whatever you like there.
Oh, this is such fun, shell...' Y
anyone ever figure it out.
While fool clumped top fool in their dullness
(Blaring here); Eureka! Shout.
I have feigned my posture, and all,
(save one? believe me
Damn Faulkner interrupts;
["das way I sees it, so das way ‘tis];
“Bastard lover!”
this way).
If the monkeritics (Would that they were that clever!)
had one ounce of brains,
my heart would rejoice: (Nay more .
I would sing sing ever.)
They'd be in my prayers,
should I ever decide to bray.
Here's my (written posthumously)
latest vurst.
I hope you ken enjoy.
(Very sad right here)
My Sun came up,
My Sun went down
(oh- boy, oh- boy
,OOOOoo - lif eeee!)
"Now with Christmastreedecorated guile,
yew critics. Enjoy your wurst.
Nice Epitaph I probably got! Much prefer this tome.
"Tired of pulling my Johnson -
Jonson,-- please pull me home."
On July 30, 2008 at 8:32 pm Ben wrote:
This is absolute rubbish, I suggest removing it immediately.
On August 8, 2008 at 3:57 pm VJ wrote:
Funny article, but why's everybody got to pile on Butte when it's down?
On August 12, 2008 at 4:48 am Vanda wrote:
Well, I'm off to pen 'On Falling Out of Bed
and Discovering the Hairclip I Lost Last
Winter' on the closest post-it note.
Who knew my morning was a poetic
adventure?
Thank you. Shards and shards.
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