Advise on writing a poem

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I have to write a poem for English class and i have no clue how to even start. Does anyone here have any advice on how to write one?

why do you have to write about?

It can be about any topic and in any form of a poem. I never wrote one before so i'm just clueless.

Mary Ellen Solt, Poet of Words and Shapes, Dead at 86

By MARGALIT FOX
Published: July 3, 2007

snip

A concrete poem exploits the potential of the written word as both a unit of linguistic meaning and a purely visual symbol. Long before the computer made it easy to manipulate text, concrete poets were using words much as a painter uses paint, arranging them to create self-referential forms that underscored a poem’s structure or theme.

In a poem

about an urn,

to take a simple example,

the words might be arrayed

in a very deliberate fashion,

so that, on the printed page,

they would form, in the eye

of the beholder, a shape

that called to mind

the precise form

of an urn.




snip

Balance of article at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/03/arts/ ... yt&emc=rss

Do a basic rhyming poem such as this...

Writing poems is really fun,
better though when it's all done.
reading it from left to right,
through the day and into night.


that was just random lol,
can be about anything though.

i find that a poem is like trying to express yourself or state something but in a more artistic and poetic way. poems don't necessarily have to rhyme but the rhyming helps with the flow of the poem.

write about something that you know about.

Poems, keep in mind, can be like anything.

The poems that I write have no structure. I just write in a stream-of-consciousness type method. Not necessarily rhyming or in rhythm or anything. I just write what comes out.

So try that. I don't know where you could find your inspiration, but hell, anything will do. Just pick a tree and then write what comes out.

Sentences don't have to be complete, it can be fragmented. Like this, I'll just write about the tree in my garden.

Winter's work begins.
The leaves are all but stripped
Heaped in piles
Strewn across
The cold, black paving stones

Man, in that one I just moved away from the tree as soon as I started writing and that could happen for you as well. ANYTHING can be the subject of poetry. Don't let a title lock you in, but you could even start with a title and try and work off that; but then if the poem goes in a whole new direction you could change the title once you're done writing the poem.