Improving Your Free Verse Poetry

The most common mistakes new poets make

Many new poets are drawn to writing free verse poetry because they believe free verse really means free style, where you just write anything, anyway you feel that day and it works because the author believes its poetry without the rules, rhyme or any set style… yet this isn’t true, which is why so much free verse goes unread.

Readers want you to succeed, and will give you a small, brief chance to get them into your work, meaning when you write you must think about the overall first impression of your work along with the power of the first line. You want me, the reader, to waste my precious time reading your stuff? Then grab my attention and pull me in using known writing tactics that make me want to read this piece and everything else you might write.

Here are a few tips for your overall writing of free verse poetry, as well as a few tips that might help you specifically on Medium.

Line length and word reduction

There is no set rule to determine line length, yet it might be one of the most important tools you can apply to improve your work. The error is that most new writes use lines that are too long and don’t breath.

Most new writers also would improve their work by reducing the unnecessary words that break the rhythm of the poem. Short, tight, concise, with every word contributing or it is gone has to be your mantra of writing.

Here is a sample of a typical stanza followed by a more nuanced line break. To understand the power of the differences, read each one loudly to yourself pausing where the normal breaks occur:

Not effective —

The wind driven, streaking water rattling my little window in my living room, the stillness of a mucky and gray late summer June afternoon day, the fading light stealing my day as my room grows darker. Here I sit happily hidden away from the world outside, rejoicing that my soul was made for rainy days just like this one.

More effective and easy to read —

Wind driven, streaking water rattling my little window, the stillness of a mucky and gray late summer afternoon, fading light stealing my day as my room grows darker, happily hidden away from the world outside, rejoicing my soul was made for the rain

If you read the first stanza out loud, you should find it is somewhat hard to read through those long lines without pausing, or in other words, the reader doesn’t have time to breathe. You should also notice how many words can be eliminated to tighten the second example.

Reduction is essential to good poetry writing, and if there was one common problem all new writers share is learning to cut, reduce and tighten their work down to the barest essence, where every word adds something to the poem. If it doesn’t help move it along, then it has to be cut.

Again, there is no set rule on where to cut your line lengths, but you will find, over time, a method that works for you, your word choice and for the images you create.

I would go to The Poetry Foundation: https://www.poetryfoundation.org and look up these masters and see how they used line length choices to enhance their work. And yes, read their poems out loud using the pauses as they write them so you can “feel” how they control your breathing and rhythm as you read their work:

· Charles Bukowski

· Denise Levertov

· Billy Collins

· Mary Oliver

· Sylvia Plath

· Donald Hall

· Raymond Carver

· Diane Di Prima

These are just a few out of an endless array of writers, but all of these are considered some of the best who have written in the last century, and you should see how each one uses line length to enhance their work. Levertov even wrote extensively about line length as she evolved her confessional style poetry throughout her career.

Images not adjectives

Don’t tell me, show me is the key to better poetry, but most new writers work on the descriptive elements of their words rather than using images to get me to see what they see. For example, let’s talk about an angry man.

Not effective-

The man stood in front of me, yelling at me about wearing a mask, and he was very angry More effective I looked up at the scruffy devil chin piece and the murderous scowl Close enough to me to smell his stinking breath Cheap beer, cigarettes and dirt brown teeth He stepped up against my chest Sheep, he whispered harshly, you’re a sheep

I hope you see images in the revised piece, not just descriptive words. I use the words “stinking breath” here, but I hope you can imagine how bad it really is when I add cheap beer, cigarettes and nasty unclean teeth to the mix. Don’t tell me, make me feel what you feel using images that help me be there with you.

A single event or moment in time

Another common mistake new writers make is trying to encompass to much in a single poem. Your poem should be about a single event or moment in time you are trying to capture. Think of you poem as a single picture of a specific part of an event, not a video of the entire day. Here is some more of the first poem we used to start this article. It was about a specific minute in time, a rainy afternoon captured by a single moment:

Wind driven, streaking water rattling my little window, the stillness of a mucky and gray late summer afternoon, fading light stealing my day as my room grows darker, happily hidden away from the world outside, rejoicing that my soul was made for the rain

Dog snoring asleep in my lap, my love napping in my arms, gentle patter of a steady rain on the roof, wind pushing the water upwards on my window as it slams into the side of our mountain, then driven toward the sky yet again

I find peace in the gentleness of an endless day of rain, the rhythm and patter on my house the music of life, water washing away a troubled mind, the much-needed cleansing of a spirit that never rests

Again, note the line length, images, and rhythm of the piece. If read out loud, you should feel the pauses and the feel as if the narrator is talking directly to you, as if sharing a secret between two old friends.

Eliminate the cliches; kill the lazy words

Clichés destroy your work by weakening the images you want to create. Most of us always use the “lazy words” when we first write a new piece, but when you revise you should strive to eliminate those with images unique to your own voice.

For example, here is a line found in a poem recently published on Medium. This is solid first draft line, but could it be improved, could we take this cliché and turn the image into something fresh?

My mother, like an earth bound saint

How many times have you read a mother compared to a saint? There is a point where the image just does not work any longer because it has been so overused, as all cliches eventually evolve. Maybe more effective here and does this not create the same image, but in fresher words?

My mother… wanted nothing, needed nothing, accepted nothing but my love

How do you see it? What makes your writing you? Create images that are fresh and unique to the individual you are. Do not cling to tired, lazy words that fail to convey the meaning because they have been so overused. Create new images, the ones you see, that make me, the reader, say, “wow, what a fresh voice.”

Master the basics of the site you chose to use to publish your work

Medium has a style of its own, as do all the writing sites. Learn the rules or never get read. It is that simple, yet I still sit and shake my head at the number of writers who have decent stuff, but who disappear because their work is buried simply because it fails to abide by the rules. Here are the four most often broken rules. If you want Medium to engage with your work, learn these. I you don’t, the algorithm will punish you and you will be sent to the land of zero reads.

· Headline: Learn to write headlines that get my attention. I use the Advanced Marketing Institute’s free analyzer and only use headlines that generate a forty or more percentile score: https://www.aminstitute.com/headline/

Make sure your headlines are no more than one line and use the use the title case converter site, again free, to properly style the head: https://saijogeorge.com/title-case-converter/

· Subheads: The first word is capped, the rest not. No period at the end of the subhead. Make sure you highlight then use the small “T” to make it a true subhead. Medium does have a strong help site and review it often if you want to survive on this site.

· Picture properly credited: Maybe the biggest rookie mistake. Properly credit the photo according to the Medium rules, or perish. You will not get curation without it, and your piece simply fades into oblivion within hours with a credited photo. As a side note, headline at the top, then the subtitle, then the photo.

· Single space, not double: Nothing ruins my experience as a reader of poetry faster than double spaced work. You must learn how to single space. This gets more readership, helps give your work better rhythm, and helps the reader highlight your work, adding to your earnings through reader interaction. This is well detailed in the Medium help section, but it is simple. Start the cursor at the beginning of the second line, hit delete moving the second line to the first, hit shift and return at the same time, which should now single space, then hit the down arrow and repeat.

There are rules in poetry when there are no rules, but style can be learned. Study the masters and read their work out loud often to feel their rhythmic flow. As Billy Collins says, if you want to write poetry, you need to read different poets every day until you find your own voice, but if you want this voice heard, learn how to best package and present what you do write.