what is the magic of language to poem and writing?

Answer 1

First rule: unless you are willing to work at your craft, leave writing alone. Seriously. We have way too many "writers" right now. We do not need folks who believe poetry should rhyme and talk about teenage angst. Leave that for your sock drawer, please.

Second rule: poetry is not about how you feel, but how you can make your listeners/readers feel. It, above all, should be an emotional ride but one that the reader experiences. If you are writing for yourself, fine; leave it in your sock drawer.

Third rule: poetry shows; it does not tell. I do not need to read how to feel about the situation. Let me, the reader, decide myself. Watch out for adjectives and adverbs; they clutter and kill. When in doubt, throw it out. Try writing about objects without putting any human directly mentioned at all. See what you can convey about the situation.

Fourth rule: poetry is crystallized emotion, refined in reflection. Your first attempt is not good enough. If you are writing with all that emotion coursing through you, put down the pencil and feel the emotion. When you write, spell-check and check punctuation. Delete words and see what you can still do. Refining seldom means adding.

Fifth rule: read modern poetry! How much do I see that looks like Dr. Seus' six year old brother wrote! Read Ray Clark Dickson, Bukowski, Davies, Bly, Ginsberg, Ferlingetti (and these are not that modern, either.)

Use line endings and beginnings for emphasis.

Pay attention to vowel sounds; use them to link parts of your verse.

Use consonant sounds to convey softness or hardness. Make your message fit your mood or directly contradict your mood. Whatever you do, make it deliberate.

Avoid -ing endings on words if you can. The sound gets overly zingy.

Eliminate ellipses (...) unless you have taken out a word or phrase in a quote (not likely) or you have been interrupted by someone (again, not likely). Ellipses do not mean "O, there is so much more I *could* say, but won't."

Go read some haiku and see what can be done with 19 syllables.

Answer 2

The magic is not to try to write "a poem". The magic is stream-of-consciousness: writing down your thoughts as they appear in your head, not how they should look on paper. Thought in its rawest form. Whether it makes sense or not, doesn't matter. Sometimes the emotions of the human experience do not make sense, but they are still there. You can't turn a dream into logic, why would we do the same with what we feel?

Answer 3

Lots of figurative language. Paint pictures with words while expressing is magical to the imagination. Rhythm, rhyme, and meter are used for the slightly more advanced poets.