Artistic Tips: Word Selection

Last week I talked about the basic structure of a poem (meter) and how it's not as important to follow those rules. This week I want to talk about the most obvious and important thing about poetry: words.  You can't have poetry without words, but you can have words without it being poetry. The structural difference is poetry consists of rhythm, meter, and rhyme while prose for the most part does not. The difference is in format, but they both require proper word selection. Prose is limited by the audience of what words are appropriate and recognizable. In an ethics paper, you probably wouldn't debate the economic benefits of distributing mass quantities of two hydrogen atoms covalently bonded to a single oxygen atom to the needy. In poetry you can. Well, maybe not exactly like in that example. Poetry uses considerably fewer words than prose which means every word should be carefully considered. This is where a thesaurus comes in handy.

You don't just want to find the right word, you want to find the best word. You want words that can have multiple meanings or certain connotations And then you want those words to be in synch with the words around them. You want them to either compliment each other (easily done with alliteration) or contrast each other to make them stand out or make people do a double take (like seemingly oxymoronic phrases). You want words that you can repeat and that can have a slightly or drastic different meaning depending on the words around it. Most importantly you want to be clever. You want to come up with a new or different take on how words are usually used, something that makes it uniquely yours. From there you can build your metaphors, and of course you should use puns and other poetic literally devices which I'll explore more in another poem, but if you want a head start on those, there's a link under Poetry Resources labeled Literary Devices.

So now I'm going to go through and highlight some of the word choices I made in this poem.

Picture Poem Project!

Watch the video to find out how to participate in the Picture Poem Project and don't forget to subscribe to my YouTube Channel for more videos about my blog and I post there first so you can some sneak peaks to future posts!

Poetry Performance: "What the F*ck is sex?"

Poetry: "What the F*ck Is Sex?"

Just to help you read the poem on your own and formulate your own initial thoughts and interpretations, I'll post my performance video tomorrow. Speaking of, feel free to comment your thoughts or questions on this poem in the comments, and I'll address them in the following posts this week.

"What the F*ck Is This Sex You Speak Of?"
By David Wright

I think girls are pretty and guys are hot,
But I don't really think about sex a lot.
Sure I had crushes on girls and guys,
But girlfriends and boyfriends felt like lies.

The straight default just felt straight up wrong.
I felt I had to hide the alternative gay behind genderless love songs.
So I didn't know if I was gay or straight or something in between.
I didn't even know what sex was. No one really tells us when we're teens.
It's this abstract concept that's suppose to be so great.
But they except us to wait.
To wait for a life time to pass us by,
Before we get to awkwardly try.

Sex is placed up there with drugs and drinks.
Things that alter and inhibit our ability to think.
If virginity is sacred, then losing it is either taboo
Or something only the cool kids get to do.

Sexy is cool. Sexy is intimacy. But I'm cool with just a high five.
Sex is money. Sex sells cars. But I don't really want to drive.

I still have crushes on guys and girls.
But that's as far as it goes in my world.
I wouldn't say no to a boyfriend or a girlfriend,
Since I could still fall in love for the first time or again.

So what the f*ck is sex? It took me a while to figure out, and I’m clever.
Sex is something I don’t want. Not now and maybe not ever.

It’s more than just sexual abstinence.
There’s no sexual attraction, not an ounce.
Maybe some day there will be.
I’m not 100% committed to celibacy.
And whether it be a woman or a man,
I’ll be ready if I know it’s God’s plan.

Therapy Tactics: Understanding Poetry and Therapy

So the straightforward theme that can be talked about in "Apathetic Artist" is cutting or self-harming. But as I revealed in the Soul section and my video post, the more subtle maybe even invisible theme of the poem for me is being polar. A mental illness that's invisible to everyone else, in my case at least since I've always had to hide my real emotions for other reasons which I'll talk about through other poems. So poems like this one made it possible for me to write down how I felt about deep personal shit that I wasn't ready or wiling to openly share with anyone because I didn't want to be seen as damaged or broken even if that's how I felt. But I can post my poems on Facebook and have my friends "like" it and comment on it. I can share the emotion without sharing the specifics.

Well, it's always a challenge trying to think of the best way to start about talking about a single issue of mine since I'm so complicated with so many issues that overlap and intertwine. I've been through so much in such a short amount of time. I'm only 21 so it's been a whole decade since my problems manifested in a significant life changing way. It's taken me some time to look back and see what was cause and effect and what was independently compacting my problems. So I'll try my best to focus on my bipolar issues for this post. Like I said in the last post, I knew something was wrong with me mentally when I was 15.

Coming Out as Bipolar

Soul Sharing: I'm Bipolar

For the Soul section, I'll walk through the poem line by line or stanza by stanza and explain why I wrote it. I'll talk about word selection, inspiration, multiple meanings, and where I placed a part of my soul in the piece. Let's begin.

"Apathetic Artist" 

First off, the tittle is alliterative which is one of my favorite and one of the easiest and most recognized poetic devices. You are going to see this a lot from me. For me, the title is usually a brief summary or my favorite line of the poem. A lot of times the title is the last thing and sometimes even the hardest part to write. This one came pretty naturally combing the first line and the theme of the poem.  And this is the first poem in my book of poetry because it embodies the theme and inspired the title of the book. (Spoilers!)

Bonus Art Tip: The Wright Way to Count Meter Like the Tone Deaf First Grader that I am

Artistic Tips: Meter and Other Basic Structures of Poetry

I picked this as my first poem to go through its PAST (Poetry, Art, Soul, and Therapy) because it is one of my poems that I spent the most time on the technical art aspect that also touches deeply to my soul and is a great segue into poetry as therapy. "Apathetic Artist" is written in the form of a Shakespearean sonnet, but not really. Allow me to break that down. A sonnet is simply a 14 lined poem. Traditionally there are two main styles of sonnets: Shakespearean or English and Petrarchan or Italian. The Shakespearean sonnet is the more famous one, at least in English and American poetry. The main difference between the two is the rhyme scheme or the pattern of which lines rhyme with each other. That's the easy part. Anyone can do that. I did that here. It's made up of three quatrains of an ABAB rhyme scheme and ends with a couplet or a pair of rhyming lines. The tricky part is that, like with most of Shakespeare's work, it's written in iambic pentameter. Not everyone can do that. I didn't do that. I just wrote it, and it more closely fit a dactyl rhythm so I just went with that as best as I could and even threw in some curve ball anapests because why not.


Now you can skip down to the glossary section at the end of this post to read the definition of all those poetic terms that I italicized for you, but I'll just give you a quick crash course on feet and meter that I learned in my poetry classes for my Literate Minor. Let's step back so we can zoom in.

Bonus Monday Video! "About the Poet"

Poetry: "Apathetic Artist"

Please read the poem on your own before watching me perform it. I think it's important for you to form your own uninfluenced interpretation of the poem.

"Apathetic Artist"
by David Wright

I’m an artist without a muse,

A poet not in pain.

Happiness makes me confused.

Summer is really lame.

Neither here nor there,

I sit in silence until a friend calls.

Apathy arrives and I don’t care.

Then I wake up and notice that now it’s fall.

Surrounded by stimuli I react with body and brain,

But my soul and heart still wander for meaning.

Chemical and emotional reaction reign.

Winter comes crawling in, clotting the bleeding. 

Pulsing in pain from the incredible loss. Apathetic.

I don’t care. The medication haze hides life’s aesthetic.

The Wright Way of Writing

This blog is dedicated to serve as a crash course tutorial on how anyone can use poetry as an artistic and therapeutic expression of the soul. Poetry has been my therapy in dealing with everything from bad breakups to dark depression to identity issues. You don't always want to talk about things with a therapist or sometimes even your closest friend, but it isn't healthy to let some things stay bottled up inside of you. When you take the time to sit down and write down your feelings, you force yourself to actually process your emotions and put concrete words to those elusive feelings. Something I did learn in therapy is mindfulness. There's so much power and control of stopping to say, "Hey, I am angry, and this is why, and it's ok," or "Hey, I am angry, but I don't really have a good reason to be angry. I should stop being angry." And then you can take those words and rearranging them and create something beautiful. You never have to share it with anyone if you don't want to. There are plenty of poems I may never publish. But you can still go back and read your art from years ago and reconnect with yourself and see how much has changed, for better or worse, or maybe nothing has really changed at all. It's like your own personal emotional time capsule.