Creative Writing

CHAPTER13

The Arresting Poem

In This Chapter

• Penning formal and free verse
• Images and how you represent them
• Writing depth and urgency
• Using prosody, rhythm, and rhyming

The question of poetry’s identity as a form of creative writing used to be easier to answer. If the words rhymed and had a regular meter (a type of rhythm), they probably constituted a poem. As cliché goes, “If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and looks like a duck, it must be a duck.”

However, these days, not all poems rhyme or fit into standard forms. Moreover, poets and literary theorists alike are fond of offering musings about how important and meaningful poetry ...