Choose what type of poem you would like to write. If you want to write a short, imagery-packed poem, select a haiku format. These short Japanese poems start with 5 syllables in the first line, 7 in second and 5 again in the third. These poems often center on nature, light, silence and the smallness of mankind. In the following Haiku referred to as "Issa's Cricket" meaning is packed into short, descriptive lines: On a branch/ floating downriver/
a cricket, singing.
Choose how you would like to address the poem. If you want to speak directly to a "you" figure, use an apostrophe format, which lets you use "you" to address your audience. If you prefer to share spiritual observations and emotions in narrative form, create a free verse format which means you can make the poem as long or as short as wish with no rules of rhyming, syllables or punctuation.
Include spiritual insights to share. If you feel that nature is not respected and revered enough in everyday life, you may write a poem like Gary Snyder or Robinson Jeffers. In his poem "Rock and Hawk," Jefferson remarks on the profound rocks, sheer cliffs and wildlife in California when he writes, "Earthquake-proved, and signatured/ By ages of storms: on its peak/ A falcon has perched." In your poem, you may write about how you a childhood home, smashed by trucks to make room for a parking lot, devastates you but moves you to understand the nothingness of the house, just boards, doors and windows, though filled with your memories.
Include line breaks that give new meaning to a phrase. Break the lines in a spot for a pause or to accentuate a line. In the poem "Going Wrong" by Jack Gilbert he starts with "The fish are dreadful. They are brought up/ the mountain in the dawn most days, beautiful/ and alien and cold from night under the sea,/ the grand rooms fading from their flat eyes." If the lines had been broken in other ways, or not broken at all, readers would not understand that spiritual elements of the poem, namely, that the dying fish are brought from the sea, cold, and their eyes close as they reach a kind of heaven.
Organize and revise. Move the parts of your poem around. Do not hesitate to make the beginning of your poem the end, or vice versa. Check your adjectives for clarity and any other words for unwanted repetition. Revise your poem once. Then, do not read or touch the poem for one full week. After the week, come back to the poem to edit and revise again. Continue this until you have a poem you like and are proud to share with others.