THE STEPS TO CREATE A GOOD POEM

 

As far as I know there is no standard theory about how to create a good poem. Even a good poet usually feels difficult when he is asked to explain about how he writes a poem. Robert Hillyer, one of America’s most honored poets, said in his book In Pursuit of Poetry that there is no answer for that question, because every poem has its own method of coming to birth.

Yet after creating many poems, I get one general method to explain how I create my poems. I am sure that this method not the only way to create a poem, but this is the simplest method, and I think everyone can do it if they want to try, without reference to their cultural basic: an academician or not. We do not need to become an academician before creating a poem and judge that one poem is good. But we need to be academician to give a rational reason why we have opinion that poem is good.

The first step: reading the good poem as much as possible. Note that the good poem not means your favorite one. You can agree that Rendra’s ballads are the good

poems, but it doesn’t mean that you must like them very much. There are criteria about what must be contained in a poem to be recognized as a good one, but there are not to be the favorite one, because everyone has their

criteria before they say “I like this poem”, or “I dislike this one”.

Second: try to create a poem. After reading the good poems, you must have so many ideas. Choose one of these ideas and try to contemplate it. After that, try to write all think that appear in your mind. Just write, don’t think about grammar and usual/common form first, you can think about that in the next step. This is time to write, not revise.

Third: try to paraphrase your poem using a critical theory. There are so many theory in literary studies, such as structural and semiotics. You can use these theory to test how good are your poem.

Fourth: this step is optional one, if you find that your poem is still poor, you can revise it, but if not, you needn’t.

I am sure that someone who creates a poem after learns critical theory and wants to create a poem, there are two possibilities for him:

(1)     He just has a willingness but he is afraid to try it because he has no enough self-confident to do it. Why? He will think that make a poem must use a theory and he hasn’t learnt about this theory yet.

(2)     He will try to do it, and his poem will be really poor. Why? He has enough self- confident, he has learnt a theory, but he implements the theory when he created the poem, so his poem will be a banal one. Why? Because there is no standard theory to create a poem, and when he tried to use an imaginary standard theory, his poem will be less of contemplation and will has the same form with scientific writing.

But how if you are as students of English Literature program have learnt about critical theory and then want to create a good poem? Is it possible? Of course, but you must kick the theory first from your mind. After that please take contemplation about one object or theme, and try to write it in word and poem’s form freely.

To close this simple writing, I wanna quote Mr.Danial’s words: “in English Literature program you will learn how to paraphrase literary works, but when you will have graduated and you can paraphrase and create literary works, the latter is a bonus”.  

Taken from : Literature Division of HIMASI UIN Sunan Kalijaga (my department)