Meet Me in a Minimalist Poem
(and take your writing to the next level!)
Wait, Form Poetry? Yes.
Form poetry tends to get a bad rap.
Too constraining.
Too challenging.
Too it’s-a-thing-of-the-past.
But even the best free verse often has an internal form that we end up perceiving as a “voice,” when, in fact, there’s a certain cadence and structural trajectory to the poet’s poems—a persistent form.
On this note, it is not uncommon for our
readers to tell us that they just knew the day’s poem was by so-and-so before they got to the end of the poem. There’s some kind of signature. A recognizable form. More than a voice, we’d venture.Many of our best writers (we work with a lot of writers!) have forayed into form poetry as a way to guide their writing journey—to do what we call practicing in a direction. These writers have gone on to be published both in literary journals and by small presses. We love what they’ve accomplished.
Where to Begin?
When first approaching form poetry, you could simply choose a form and start.
Or, we often recommend that you consider your purpose, your current emotional state, or the emotional state you hope to create in the reader. From there, we offer the guide below, for how to choose a form. (The guide is also in the back of How to Write a Form Poem, if you prefer to keep it handy in paperback.)
Quick Guide to Choosing a Form
Villanelle: useful for exploring cycles or themes that feel resistant to answers; can also be used to work against a topic, using mocking humor
Sonnet: excellent way to confine or rein in a potentially sappy, bombastic, or overly sentimental theme; also an excellent way to work against a topic humorously
Sestina: good for exploring confusion, questions, worries, obsessions, neuroses, and fears in an oblique way
Acrostic: good for showing and hiding, making a subversive comment or observation
Ghazal: helpful for emphasizing longing or for exploring metaphysical questions
Pantoum: useful for plumbing memory and exploring the past
Ode: excellent way to praise something or someone you love or admire
Rondeau: helpful for giving form to extremes of either sadness or dark wit, commemorating an event, or singing to someone or something
Found poem: helpful for exploring a variety of voices and generating new thoughts and perspectives on a subject. Especially useful when encountering a bout of writer’s block
Haiku: good for creating immediacy or focusing in on an emotion or encounter
What About that Minimalist Poem Promised in the Headline?
Minimalist poems use as little space as possible to communicate something powerful. So, you can use them to work with a sense of emptiness or desperation. Or, perhaps counterintuitively, you can also use them to humorous effect.
Sample Minimalist Poems:
Maracas
no fingers,
no sound.
—L.L. Barkat
coffee
coffee
—Aram Saroyan
We hope you try on a few forms, to bring your writing to the next level!
If you do, feel free to drop your “tries” into the comment boxes at the respective posts we’ve linked to in the Quick Guide above. We’ll be delighted to see where “practicing in a direction” takes you.