Despite having written hundreds of poems, over the past decade I’ve kept poetry at arm’s length. It’s still within my reach, should I choose to try writing verse again. But without the benefit of daily practice, I haven’t been able to return to the craft with much enthusiasm. I’ve long reserved poetry as a means of expressing thoughts, emotions, or ideas. At times, I have some jumbled thoughts that seem to loosely fit together, but wouldn’t be easily put into prose. Writing poetry, then, became a reflex, as much of my writing has become.

When I first began making collections for my poetry, it was suggested that I call the collection “Reflections on Life.” I felt like that wouldn’t be the best title to publish my work. Still, it’s true many of my poems indeed do reflect on various aspects of my life. So, how much of my poetry is made up of actual reflections on life, and how much becomes distorted through verse?

Writing Poetry VS Writing Stories

As a child, my imagination was boundless. Back then, I dreamt of becoming a novelist, crafting intricate plots and developing rich characters and settings. My first few efforts in my elementary school days were filled with whimsical nonsense, yet they were enjoyed. I took pride in my classmates’ chuckles while I shared tales of talking animals and magical space travels. But as I got older, I realized that writing coherent narratives was an arduous task. My mind would flit from one idea to another, never settling long enough to build a solid foundation. Even in my late-thirties, this is still the case.

My imagination rarely stays on a single thread, often moving onto another one almost as soon as I begin. I’ve worked on my mind’s tendency to wande mightily over the years, but it’s still true that poetry comes far more naturally to me than long-form stories. My plots have always tended to fork and meander a lot, which means they tend to get tangled up and I quit on them. Meanwhile, poems can stick to a subject only as long as my brain wishes it to and no longer.

So, after I found that writing stories wasn’t fulfilling for me, I shifted my focus to writing song lyrics. Of course, without musical accompaniment, they were “just” poems. My work was often very emotionally charged and often took cues from my dreams and my imagination. I was rarely happy with it, yet writing poetry somehow came naturally to me, unlike the structured demands of storytelling. 

Each poem was a raw, emotional snapshot, often inspired by dreams and fleeting moments of imagination. Looking back, I realized that while some poems were rough, they held an authenticity that my attempts at long-form stories lacked. So, even when I didn’t really like the poems I wrote, I kept doing it anyway out of some need to practice the craft.

In retrospect, my early poems were a mixed bag — some were quite enjoyable, a few especially thought-provoking, but many others fell flat. I often dismissed my work as time passed, but over the years, I grew to appreciate the honesty and spontaneity within those lines. There was a beauty in their imperfection, fragments of truth difficult to write in prose.

Some years ago, I shifted back to writing stories. I created many colorful characters and imagined complex backdrops, both political and natural. Still, I struggled to get it all to work in harmony. It was suggested to me several times to turn my creative work into poems. But, there was too much of a disconnect between poems and story writing for me to attempt it long term.  A few decent poems came out of it of such efforts, but it never became a regular creative outlet for me.

Are My Poems Reflections or Distortions of Life?

For Christmas one year, I was asked for books I would want to read. So, I requested poetry-related books. In that vein, I was given a book about teaching children to write poetry. It’s an older book from the 1970s titled “Wishes, Lies and Dreams” by Kenneth Koch. Apparently, it was a big deal in the English literature community when it was first published. Sadly, the great lessons the book teaches seemingly have been forgotten by many people today.

Koch’s belief that poems should be born from wishes, lies, and dreams helped me realize that poetry, like childhood stories, could be free and unrestrained. I considered taking cues from Koch’s work with grade-school children. Koch taught that poems should spring from wishes, lies, and dreams, however absurd or unreal, whether innocent, pretty, or gross. That playful freedom is what adults often forget in their pursuit of polish.

His method which encouraged children to start with “I wish” or “I dream” in their poetry was revolutionary. It simplified the creative process, stripping away complexities that often stifle even adult poets. This way, it’s easy to make comparisons with seemingly disparate things to form vivid images. It’s much too easy as an adult to let conventions and fear of rejection color our work or, worst of all, force it into some sort of blandness. This approach reignited my passion for poetry.

Poetry is a creative art just like drawing, painting, sculpting or crafting, just with words. So, the last thing you want to do is over-complicate poetry. It should be an accessible art for everyone, it should be free to express, and begin and end only with a simple idea. Complexity can come with time and practice, but poetry isn’t meant for dissertations, after all.

Why I’ve Strayed From Writing Poetry

As I read more about how to teach poetry, I rediscovered my love of the craft. For a time, I even considered that my true calling might be to be a poet of sorts. But, my aim has and never will be to have my verses be the stuff of legend. I just need to say what should be said. For even in the lies of poetry, there is always a hint of truth. Unfortunately, verses don’t come to me the way they once did.

I wonder if in no longer writing poetry I somehow lost the spark that I once gained from reading Koch’s book. My prose writing hasn’t suffered at all, but whenever I’ve tried to write a poem in the past five years or so, it just sounds forced. Good poetry should never read as forced or pushed to meet some imaginary standard. As I’ve read more about great poets, I realize even the greatest poets are only remembered for a handful of poems, usually a tiny percentage of their total output. 

Going back to the idea of my poetry generally being reflections on life, from certain perspectives many of them probably are. Of course, many reflections will also inevitably become distortions. But, “distortions of life” doesn’t make for a particularly tantalizing collection title, nor is it an accurate choice for putting a collective take on my works of verse.

When I started writing poetry, I found a sense of freedom that no other art form provided. But, over time it became clear that my calling wasn’t to create legendary verses, but to simply express what needed to be said. In the end, even the lies of poetry hold a hint of truth, and that’s enough. 

Koch’s ideas reinforced that poetry should be accessible, free to explore the absurd and the profound. It’s liberating to embrace this perspective, allowing verses to flow without fear of convention or rejection. Perhaps I’ve somehow lost the daring that made my poems that did work worthy to be read. Also, it may help to work ‘I wish’ or ‘I dream’ into my prose, too, to recapture the magic I had in my teenage years when writing those immature, but fascinating poems.

Even now as I’ve left poetry behind mostly in favor of prose, I carry with me the lessons from my poetry writing. At its best, poetry reflects life not as it is, but as it feels. It creates these beautiful distortions that are twisted, vivid, and true in ways prose often can’t reach. Even today as I write mostly in prose, I know that all those years of writing poems shaped the writer I am today.

~ Amelia Desertsong