Poetry Exists Because Some People Refuse To Take The Moon Just For What It Is

Moon Phases: A lesson on writing poetry with a short anthology collection

The moon is a common theme among poets; Andrea Gibson jokes about their almost-obsessive quirk to add the moon to all their poems. The last time I heard, Andrea still thinks it’s justifiable. It’s the moon, for god’s sake: magic.

In high school, Mrs. Odonnel-Allen, Mrs. OA for short, required her students to keep a “moon journal,” a diary of moon observations. Unsurprisingly, mine was quite poetic. It’s where my poem “Dinner” orginates. It’s a simple poem and remains one of my favorites.

Putting pen to journal paper as I peered out our living room window at the cycling moon helped give my spirit an anchor during my senior year. Later, towards the beginning of college, I remember leaving the movie, Down In The Delta, which I watched alone, despair awash over my emotional being as I walked to my car. I hugged the hard cold steering wheel for a time, before looking up at the night sky.

There, I saw the hard cold moon cradled in the palm of night. I felt as though I was the moon, alone, among stars, connected.

The moon’s luminescence, Her power felt unattainable; while the moon flaunted Her spirit, I felt my spirit recede further inside myself. I felt the tension between community and loneliness — a solo movie-goer in a crowd of friends and couples — and took comfort in the melancholy beauty of this push and pull.

What Is Poetry, Philosophically Speaking?

Poetry is to connect the many stars to the lonely moon, to remember She is indeed Her own star, and our teacher.

Poems are a vehicle of expression for thoughts and experiences often challenging to articulate, to view common subjects from many different angles, and as a means of facing truths so that we, as people, and as a society, can move forward in growth, are the ultimate purposes of poetry.

When I recognized the beauty of my experience that cold lonely night, I realized experiencing like this is poetry. I have included an anthology of sorts at the end of this article. The anthology contains the poems referenced along with sample quotes from each poem. These represent some of the best moon poems, reflecting our collective experiences, shared and alone, always, always, with the moon in our atmosphere.

How To Build A High-Caliber Poem

To construct a high-caliber poem, the writer will likely require a foundation of aesthetics to build upon. Like when a house has “good bones.” You want your poem to have the same — good bones, a good foundation, and details that make you want to stay a while.

The poet should use consistent punctuation and know their grammar. Breaking rules is fine, just know the rules first, and then know your purpose for breaking them. If there’s no purpose, don’t break the rule. Because poetry expects the reader to let the words simmer, to ponder, and think, clear grammar and succinct language is ideal. We don’t want to lose our reader by being sloppy or overly complicated.

Poetry is tricky that way. It’s harder to craft than you might think.

Your Poem Is a Place For Tension; It’s Not a Place For Weak Words and Poor Grammar

Poetry juxtaposes often seemingly contradictory ideas or descriptions to intrigue the reader, to allow our imaginations to wander, pursue, and ponder. Poems can complete an idea, scene, concept, or philosophy. The poem guides the reader from one line to the next until the end of the poem, and after the poem is read, it should linger in the reader’s mind.

Continuity is imperative so that the poem keeps the reader captivated until the last line.

Poems have no room for weak lines, especially because they are such compact pieces of literature. A poem must say a lot with very few words. The poems in this collection exemplify independent strong lines that merge into cohesive, powerful poems.

Repeat: Continuity is imperative so that the poem keeps the reader captivated until the last line.

There Are Many Beginnings and Endings in Poems

A simple technique for tightening the visual aesthetic of your poem is to try omitting “weak” words from the beginning and end of lines.

Examples of “weak” words in the context of a poem are: “the,” “and,” “or” and other nonspecific, broad words. An example of a poet who accomplishes this well is Roger Jones’ poem “Eclipse,” which includes end words in the following order: “shape, sidewalk, way, held, wind, mass own, light//world, swallowed, Clouded, air, learn, comes, know, enough.” The reader gets a feeling for the poem from studying a handful of words Rogers uses in his poem.

It may look like a simply crafted poem, but poems that guide you through are often the ones created with the most calculation.

The simpler and shorter the poem, the more impact — or lack of impact — potential for each word used.

Is Your Poem Aesthetically Complete?

An additional poetic concern is crafting a poem that is complete in its form. This sometimes means having a beginning, middle, and end. This can become confusing because of the creative license in writing poetry. A poet will often wait until the end of a poem to offer the initial thought that inspired the poem, wrapping up the previous montage of images and thoughts.

Changing the “order of operations” can create unexpected tension within your poem. Try putting the beginning at the end or the middle at the beginning. Slightly altering how we tell our stories may grab the reader’s interest sooner.

An example of this is Gerald Stern’s “Matins,” in which the poem begins with descriptive, abstract language and becomes increasingly concrete. “Matins” opens:

“Look in whose clouded eye behind the red vein the fine clothing of nine others is reflected,”

and ends with,

“I gave him my old suit, why doesn’t he cut the grass? Why doesn’t he water the plants and polish the chandelier? Why doesn’t he clean the window, early Moon?”

Gerald Stern crafts “Matins” in such a way by the end of the poem we know his tone of biting sarcasm is used to observe the place of a servant among “much more important people.” Through tension, Stern’s view on the injustice of class lines is powerfully delivered.

Poet’s Philosopher's Stone

Poetry is the word of truth that proves our existence. The art of poetry invokes much-needed discourse to those willing to stretch our minds in the human community.

There’s comfort in reclining on the page with words that make the unthinkable familiar, words that help us understand we are not alone. Poets and poems provide the opportunity to express cataclysmic and traumatic times of epiphany in our lives.

Poetry empowers us to express life, interconnected, spiritual, political: the experience of existence.

MOON PHASES: POEMS*

moon revelations This section is curated to display the awe-inducing power of the moon.

My Moon Wendy Bishop

All my years — yet full moons still surprise me late when I’m trying to make meaning out of darkness.

Moon Change Adrianne Kalfopoulou

The roll of stones, froth ribbons in the curling wave and the night christens this sound over and over, counting through the moment’s climb

Moon Night (An Epiphany) Wong Phui Nam

Over the crystals in the grass, a light scent drifts with the fragrance breathed from a flower-encrusted, leafless grove of frangipani. In the shadows, it warms in a heavy stench, an incense

despairing moon These poems articulate the human experience of despair as conveyed through the moon.

Eclipse Roger Jones

Big wind in the trees, the moon’s umber shape is tossing shadows on the warm sidewalk. You watch the shadows rotate — which way will the world move tomorrow? Here you’re held by face, a need to be in one place

Legacy Cyril Dabydeen

Let me answer to the moon, The pace set hard.

I breathe heavily With fury on my tongue;

Oh, this test of thunder, A lightning heart-beat again.

To You Mario Duarte

Silver of yellow moon, you glisten in a dark time. A shadow has settled over Uncle Nasario’s lung.

He is dying but refuses to even believe it.

philosopher’s moon These poems illustrate humanity’s pull to confide in the moon as we wax philosophic. “Matins” makes this relationship — communion — with the moon crystal clear by specifically addressing the entire poem to The Moon.

Einstein’s Moon Ann Glenn

Can the smallest parts of things be so unlike the things themselves? Between the infinitely vast

and the unimaginably small, in the odd middle under the starts he could nearly explain, Einstein wandered in the snow, in sandals, locals say, extravagant with the time he proved so arbitrary, so wed to its keeper.

Moonology Albert Goldbarth

There’s a flower inside of the flower the bee doesn’t know about until it’s too late; an Earth inside of Earth, we uncover its temple columns, weapons, scrapers, coins, and marvel as if this were Mars.

Matins Gerald Stern

he whose dust is dirt, I gave him my old suit, why doesn’t he cut the grass? Why doesn’t he water the plants and polish the chandelier? Why doesn’t he clean the window, early Moon?

moon as metaphor The fourth section employs four poems that skillfully use moon personification and metaphor.

Moonlight on Endymion’s Sleep Reginald Shepherd

Disappearance is a trick

I do too well: it keeps me young, waning and waxing in counterpoint with my dark. Trailing winter clouds of adjectives and attributes (harvest,

gibbous, hunter’s; new, first quarter, full, last

If I Could Mate With The Moon Daniel Boyne

If I could mate with the moon Our children would be The stars and the dark spaces Enough to fill a night sky

Lover’s Moon James Kimbrell

Nudging you, pining, “Hey Lyd, wake up, I scored Some killer X!” To see you these days, hairsprayed, Mascaraed and walking with the unmistakeable Saddlelike sway of the hopelessly wallowed out, Is to see the moon herself, that old love-starved Queen — how quickly she turns from white

Moon Jelly Gabriel Spera

A vitreous humor, pulsing in the nether, a living study in the vagaries of joy. She is receptiveness made flesh — or nearly — the shallow bowl of her giving body never filled.

woman’s moon Finally, the anthology closes with “woman’s moon,” two poems detailing the influence of the moon on women’s lives. I chose the closing poems for their power. “Hot” by M.E. Csamer and “Thirteen Moons” by Sidney Wade demonstrate the potent force of the moon in women’s lives, and how, whether or not we notice, women are intricately connected to that physically untouchable luminescence housed on our home planet.

Hot M.E. Csamer

She is saying goodbye to the moon’s pull, rhythm of tides: letting go of consequence, tomorrow.

Thirteen Moons Sidney Wade

I Whole white face In front of the black else. The whole white world is drenched.

II Woman moon. Row deeper into the moon water.

III Where is the immortal thing? In the trees, now, naked to the waist.

*I’ve included snippets from each poem for you to experience. When possible, there’s a link to a poem in its entirety.