[Fred Longworth]

In writing a poem, I often come up with what I judge to be a good opening, a sense about where to go from there, and an animating emotion to move it all forward. When I work this way, a poem is filled with surprise and discovery.

But I've wondered: many prose writers compose the very first and very last parts first, and fill in the middle; or the very last first, and write the story backwards.

Assuming some of you approach your poems these other ways, how have these techniques worked for you?

Fred

[inkwellpoetess]

I often have different images or sometimes a line that sounds really wonderful pop into my head, then I will try to create a poem around that.

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Peace!
<><><>TG<><><& gt;

[ginger]

Fred,

I can only say that not working this way, not having an ending in mind before I begin, has left me stranded several times and led to a folder full of unfinished poems. On the other hand, I've tried to work with a pre-fabricated conclusion and found I've had difficulty developing a really interesting way of getting there.

My conclusion, thusfar, has been this: A poem does in a given number of lines, what a short story or a novel might take several pages or chapters to do. For myself, therefore, I've had to give up the notion that I can write say 20 poems in the amount of time it might take a prose writer to produce one short story or novel.

With that in mind then, I start from an idea, work forward, and plan to have several peter out for every single poem that's finished.

Ginger

[jasonhuff]

i know i usually have an idea, phrase, or image in mind. i let it sit there until it's fleshed itself out enough to start writing. no telling how long that takes. then i write the first draft. there's no telling where revision takes it. the original idea, phrase or image could end up being at the beginning, the end, somewhere in the middle, or even gone completely.

jason

[Roger Slater]

Years ago I met the author John Hawkes and marvelled how many details of "Blood Oranges" had been anticipated by the first chapter. I said he must plan everything so very carefully. He said no, he just wrote the first chapter last.

In poetry, I find that many poets are driven to write by a first line or two, but that they often find that once the poem is far along they want to delete the lines that got them started. In my old workshops we used to call these kinds of opening lines "throat clearing."

I've rarely gone back and added an entirely new beginning after finishing a draft. (Though I did post some doggerel in a light-hearted gazebo thread just today in which I added a first stanza; this might have been the first time I did something like that).

But as a rule, I'd say that I and most folks I know achieve their best poems as they start writing and building up steam and discover interesting ways to take their thoughts and push them along, which means that they're most likely to prune the throat-clearing beginning as they try to push the ending to a more interesting and satisfying sense of discovery and closure.

[KewlKat]

Hey All
I am a prose writer who 'works' at writing. 6 to 8 hrs a day sometimes. 4000 words in a day. Poetry comes to me in bursts, usually when I'm not 'working'. I capture most of it sometimes and some of it most times. I have very rarely improved a poem by rewrite only by starting anew from where I've come to. So different to prose. The rewrites and the edits. The cuts and pastings. Bringing middles forward and moving backs back further. A fluid medium but limited.
Poetry soars but is fixed like crystal........sorry, vague abstractions. Poetry is abstraction: A representation of reality so less mutable than prose which merely describes it.
This is probably more smoke than heat. I'll get outa ya way.
Bill

[jasonhuff]

actually bill, i think i'd have to disagree with you about poetry being abstraction. it's only that if you make it abstraction. i think most good poems are something concrete. yeah, maybe the idea behind it is an abstraction, but so isn't the theme in any piece of prose. no, i'd venture to say that good poetry is anything but abstraction.

i'm also not sure what you mean by calling it limited. since it followed rewrites and edits, cuts and pastings, bring middles forward, etc. i'm not sure if one leads to the next or what you're saying here. but i can tell that fiction falls under the same rules of rewrite. i'm a prose writer also, so i know. i've had many times i've had to delete sections, move things around in prose. i've got two, that i have to totally rewrite because the pov doesn't work as well as it should, and there is a better way to work it. no, a writer of either poetry or prose has to not be afraid of revision. your first idea may be the best, but the first draft rarely is. be honest with us, of those 4,000 words a day you write, how many do you keep?

speaking of abstraction, what is this supposed to mean, "Poetry soars but is fixed like crystal" and "Poetry is abstraction: A representation of reality so less mutable than prose which merely describes it." ? the problem with statements like that is that they are what many people think poetry is. pretty words. hard to understand phrases. which isn't at all what good poetry is.

or maybe i just misread what you were saying.

jason

[Peter K]

Fred, an interesting topic. For what it's worth, I find most times that I start with an image or phrase and let the poem evolve from there. I have written a few poems where I knew how I wanted it to end, and then worked toward that. Seems to me either method can work effectively . . . though I suspect one loses that "surprise and discovery" which makes the creation of a poem so meaningful to the poet by working back from an ending.

Peter

[Julie]

Originally posted by Fred Longworth:
Assuming some of you approach your poems these other ways, how have these techniques worked for you?

I've got a weird way of writing poems, I think. I usually write while walking about town, or driving, when an interesting sequence of words comes to mind, or I see a picture I want to capture.

I rarely have a plot mapped out. I rarely have anything mapped out. I rarely delete the first lines, since they are most often the lines that capture what I wanted to say.

Then I ramble on for a while, come to the end, and stop.

The great thing about sonnets is that they have a clearly defined end. If you're in the habit of writing sonnets, you have to make a conscious decision to go beyond 14 lines. I rarely do, since I rarely have that much to say.

Julie

[Elle Bruno]

Fred -For me, a poem takes about ten minutes. Plus two years. I start with something that hits me, causes me some sort of psychic pain, and work outward, trying to figure what it wants to become. Each poem feels like a puzzle, with a different way of solving it. I feel like I'm starting from scratch each time. Dee