What Should it Mean?
How should you decide what the theme of your poem will be? You should probably have at least a vague idea of the poem’s meaning before writing it, although meaning will often change or develop through the writing process. Here are a few ideas.
Go to Scripture. The best place to find truth is in the Word of God. Think about the things the Lord has taught you recently as you’ve studied His Word at church or in your personal devotions. What truth have you learned that could be the foundation for your poem? The author of “Hope” used her poem to convey the biblical definition of hope—a confident expectation that something will happen because God has said it will.
Choose an image. Think about a concrete object, such as a candle, a birds nest, or a rusty tricycle in someone’s garage. What ideas and feelings do you associate with that object? In his poem “Ars Poetica” Archibald MacLeish showed how powerful symbols can be by reminding us of the associations we all naturally make with certain objects:
For all the history of grief
An empty doorway and a maple leaf
For love
The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea.
Pack your language as tightly as possible. Using your central image to convey your meaning, try to say as much as you can with as few words as possible. Write a draft of your poem; then go back and cross out words and phrases until the language is pared down to express only the essential ideas. Don’t try to explain what your symbol stands for or “give away” the theme by stating it directly. Make your poem hint and suggest rather than lecturing or philosophizing.
And while you’re keeping all these things in mind, don’t forget to have fun tinkering with words. This is poetry, after all!
