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“Poetry and Grief
“Poetry is spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.” –William Wordsworth, Lyrical Ballads
There are not many emotions that can overflow as spontaneously and powerfully as grief. Often, grief will linger with us. Other times, it catches us off guard. The poet William Wordsworth knew this, losing three of his children when they were still young, and much of his poetry grappled with issues over loss and grief. Through poetry, Wordsworth found a medium to express his feelings, becoming one of the most celebrated poets of his time. We, too, can find creative ways to express our grief. Poetry is an effective form of artistic expression for grief and loss; it allows us to put our feelings into words, words that are not as necessarily contained by sentences and grammar but free flowing.
Poetry comes in many forms—from the sonnet to the epic poem. Some poems focus on having a particular meter or rhythm to how the words flow, some poems focus on rhyming words. The three forms suggested here are free verse, rhyming couplets, and the haiku; however, feel free to experiment with forms that come naturally and flowing for you.
A good resource on the different forms of poetry and how to write them can be found on the internet (see poets.org’s article on poetic forms–the website has a menu you can select from with over thirty different forms of poems and examples of each).
Free Verse
Free verse poetry is just what it sounds like. It is free from the constraints of any kind of meter or rhyming scheme. Instead, one is free to just let their thoughts and feelings flow out in written form. The free verse poems tend to follow a natural rhythm of human speech, with line breaks often appearing at natural pauses (like where a comma might normally appear in prose text). Especially for beginning poets, the free verse form may be helpful in just getting one’s thoughts from their mind to the page without having to worry too much about form. The ultimate goal of a poem is up to the poet, but many poems seek to express feelings or thoughts in unique ways, using metaphors or comparisons. Others try to capture a moment or a memory in words. The free verse is an ideal form to capture
How to write a free verse poem:
There are many ways to begin writing a poem. Some begin with a technique called “free writing,” where they just start writing without any plan or purpose and see what comes of it. If you are having difficulty trying to think of what to write about, perhaps try some free writing—clear your mind, put the pencil or pen to paper, and just write. Don’t be concerned about spelling, grammar, or sentences, don’t erase or cross out, just write until the well of words is empty. Then you can go back to what you wrote and pull words, phrases, or ideas out of what you have written to create a poem. Others will start with an image, memory, emotion, or thought in mind and work towards a poem that way, by focusing on that particular idea as they write the whole way through. Some might write a poem to eulogize a loved one, listing their loved one’s attributes, accomplishments, or their memories of that loved one. Know this: there is no right or wrong way to write a free verse poem, no set length or anything else. Give yourself permission to write whatever comes to mind. After all, you can always go back and edit it later.
My favorite example is Ysaye M Barnwell’s “Wanting Memories,” which you can find here.
Rhyming Couplets
Poems with rhyming couplets are perhaps the most widely known form of poetry, and I would argue is what most people think of when they think of a poem. Poems with rhyming couplets do not necessarily have a set rhythm or meter. The focus instead is on the rhyming of the last words of every two lines. These lines are always rhymed in a pair. For example, William Shakespeare ends the play Romeo and Juliet with a rhyming couplet: “For never was a story more of woe, / Than this of Juliet, and her Romeo.” Similar to a free verse poem, the lines can be as long or as short as you like. You can choose to have a meter to your poems or not, the important part of this form is making the lines of the poem rhyme in pairs. Rhyming poems help give the poem a memorable lilt as each line rhymes with the one directly before it or after it—think of many songs that rhyme.
How to write a poem with rhyming couplets:
You can start just like before—by doing a freewriting exercise to help center your thoughts. You can also begin by thinking about the subject of your poem and go from there. When you start writing the lines of your poem, be very intentional of the word you want to end your line with, noting if it is easy to rhyme with other words, and if there is a word that it rhymes with that will help continue to move the poem forward.”
How my heart sings 