MMMFA tips

Don't use similes.

Similes are great, but nothing says "I am trying to write a POEM" like the tossed-off simile used as filler.

Don't use "beautiful" words like "shimmer," iridiscent," "perfect," "beautiful."

Look at the language Creeley uses: "What am I to myself that must be remembered, insisted upon so often?" Or Frank O'Hara: "The only way to be quiet is to be quick, so I scare you clumsily or surprise you with a stab." The work, the poetic burden, is not shouldered by the "poetic" word.

There are excellent poets, like A. Sze, who get by on the present tense and the "luminous" vocabulary. My own personal opinion is that Sze would be even better if he didn't iridesce and luminesce us so much, if he didn't rely on the present tense as default.

All of this is aimed simply at avoiding the "default" style. The style that almost everbody falls back on when they start to write. These clichés "work" to some extent: they get you through the poem. You don't know what to do next? Throw in a simile. And everyone has a default style, even if it's a more sophisticated one. You just don't want yours to be that shared by virtually every other beginning writer. Of course, really inexpert writers use even more obvious clichés than these.

Putting together all my tips so far you might get something like this, read in the "poetry reading voice":

A single perfect hair
trembles
for days
like rust on the hood
of my father's 1957 Chevy,
each iridiscent drop of dew
like an ancient word...