Look for poetry that stirs you: Rhythm

For me, that’s always going to have some punchy rhythm. 

Rhythm in poetry is made by word choice, order of words, length of lines and stanzas, etc. It’s easiest to feel it  in strictly structured, rhyming poems like Shakespearean sonnets. It’s probably why that kind of poetry gets taught so much in school. 

Even if it’s not as obvious with modern and contemporary poetry, language rhythm is still doing something.  I particularly love poems that do two things with rhythm: 

1. Be fun and even novel or surprising. Not just normal speech. I get enough of that in emails and work conversation. 
2. Contribute to the point of the poem. Like, if you want the reader to really feel something you can use the rhythm to lead the reader to your point. Like break out the heart of the poem with line breaks, or dwindle the line lengths down for focus. Maybe set up a lulling string of up-and-down syllables, then suddenly break on that one word that you want the reader to notice. 

So many of our fellow poets I read in bookstores write in a very flattened affect. It feels as though many poets only ever read haiku poems in third grade, and Twitter (X, whatever) posts ever since.  I admit, this is definitely one I am guilty of sometimes. Some days you just have a single prism image in your mind. And you type it up in your notes app (this blog is def being typed in the notes app while I convince myself to shower in the morning before work). 

You’ll know what I’m talking about if you pick up a thick book of poems published within the last 15 years that has like 4 lines on every page, and the last line is often in italics. Drab thoughts like the thousands perpetuate my personal sad stasis. 

That’s not what poetry is for. 

Instead, I go in for poets, both of the classical non-social-media poets and serious IG and Tik Tok poets. 2 examples of classic, non-social media poets: 

• Plath’s Daddy is a monster king of a poem with powerful rhythm. Some rhyming emphasizes the brisk one and two syllable words with choppy line breaks. The overall effect being rolled forward like riding the train she references in the 7th stanza.  
• Ocean Vuong’s poetry has a very silky rhythm. His poem The Gift uses super obvious repetition of “abc abc abc” a couple times and then SNAPS that rhythm by interrupting the speaker to emphasize the drama and terror of the poem’s situation. 

And 2 examples of social media poets: 

• J. Oscar writes super short statement poems and uses short sharp words with tons of line breaks to really ram home the tone. Simple but effective rhythm! 
• Parallelism also really amps the rhythm – like this shorty from rainbowsalt: 

You deserve to be loved
and chosen — 

not almost loved,
or almost chosen.

 

Even if the thoughts are simple, like this rainbowsalt one, that doesn’t mean the poem should be dull. Please don’t settle for dull poetry.

Poetry is for your soul. Joy. Anguish. To tear you up and put you back together! Not to placate your already tired and quickly-becoming-bitter personality. Find uprooting rhythms!