Poems About Poetry Writing

They say to write what you know…

Most poets come to a point in their artistry where writing poems about poetry writing just comes naturally. It makes sense; once you start writing poetry, you hardly ever cease to do it, and once it consumes you life, it becomes more of a lifestyle than a hobby. So of course we’re going to write about things we spend so much time doing! In fact, writing a poem about poetry can be a great place to start if you’re suffering from writer’s block. 

There are different ways to do this, of course; so here’s a list of funny poems about poetry, poems about hating poetry, general poems about poetry, and everything in between. 

Poems About Writing Poetry

So You Want to be a Writer? - Charles Bukowski

if it doesn't come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don't do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don't do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don't do it.
if you're doing it for money or
fame,
don't do it.
if you're doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don't do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don't do it.
if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,
don't do it.
if you're trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.

if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.

if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you're not ready.

don't be like so many writers,
don't be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don't be dull and boring and
pretentious, don't be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don't add to that.
don't do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don't do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don't do it.

when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.

The Poet - Jane Hirshfield 

    She is working now, in a room

    not unlike this one,

    the one where I write, or you read.

    Her table is covered with paper.

    The light of the lamp would be

    tempered by a shade, where the bulb's

    single harshness might dissolve,

    but it is not, she has taken it off.

    Her poems? I will never know them,

    though they are the ones I most need.

    Even the alphabet she writes in

    I cannot decipher. Her chair --

    Let us imagine whether it is leather

    or canvas, vinyl or wicker. Let her

    have a chair, her shadeless lamp,

    the table. Let one or two she loves

    be in the next room. Let the door

    be closed, the sleeping ones healthy.

    Let her have time, and silence,

    enough paper to make mistakes and go on.

Ars Poetica - Archibald MacLeish

A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit,

Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb,

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown—

A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds.

A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs,

Leaving, as the moon releases
Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,

Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,
Memory by memory the mind—

A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs.

A poem should be equal to:
Not true.

For all the history of grief
An empty doorway and a maple leaf.

For love
The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea—

A poem should not mean
But be.

Introduction to Poetry - Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide
or press an ear against its hive

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,
or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.
I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.
But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with a rope
and torture a confession out of it.
They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

I Leave Bits of Me Everywhere - Karen Swank-Fitch

poem-words are my clothing, stripped late at night

a trail from the threshold to the foot of bed

along the stairs lay verbs

the actions i need to climb twelve steps at 2 am

a vowel left adjacent to toothbrush

i get sloppy with tartar and allusions

over the cornice of mirror, hangs a strand of pearly metaphors

a simile in my sink

a limerick needing to be laundered

the clothes hamper is full of rimes & meters in want of mending

kick off the shoes,

make a pile of cacophony

wrap myself in the plum flannel of sonnet

hair up-tied with haiku

find the resting place for naked poet... 

in ambiance i light a candle

a sestina goes up in flames.

Poems About Hating Poetry

Poetry - Marianne Moore

I too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle.
  Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers that there is in
  it after all, a place for the genuine.
  Hands that can grasp, eyes
  that can dilate, hair that can rise
    if it must, these things are important not because a

high-sounding interpretation can be put upon them but because they are
  useful; when they become so derivative as to become unintelligible, the
  same thing may be said for all of us—that we
  do not admire what
  we cannot understand. The bat,
    holding on upside down or in quest of something to

eat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll, a tireless wolf under
  a tree, the immovable critic twinkling his skin like a horse that feels a flea, the base—
  ball fan, the statistician—case after case
  could be cited did
  one wish it; nor is it valid
    to discriminate against “business documents and

school-books”; all these phenomena are important. One must make a distinction
  however: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the result is not poetry,
  nor till the autocrats among us can be
“literalists of
  the imagination”—above
    insolence and triviality and can present

for inspection, imaginary gardens with real toads in them, shall we have
  it. In the meantime, if you demand on the one hand, in defiance of their opinion—
  the raw material of poetry in
  all its rawness, and
  that which is on the other hand,
    genuine, then you are interested in poetry.

My Confessional Sestina - Dana Gioia

Let me confess. I’m sick of these sestinas

written by youngsters in poetry workshops

for the delectation of their fellow students, 

and then published in little magazines

that no one reads, not even the contributors 

who at least in this omission show some taste. 

Is this merely a matter of personal taste? 

I don’t think so. Most sestinas

are such dull affairs. Just ask the contributors 

the last time they finished one outside of a workshop, 

even the poignant one on herpes in that new little magazine 

edited by their most brilliant fellow student. 

Let’s be honest. It has become a form for students, 

an exercise to build technique rather than taste 

and the official entry blank into the little magazines—

because despite its reputation, a passable sestina 

isn’t very hard to write, even for kids in workshops 

who care less about being poets than contributors. 

Granted nowadays everyone is a contributor. 

My barber is currently a student 

in a rigorous correspondence school workshop.

At lesson six he can already taste 

success having just placed his own sestina

in a national tonsorial magazine.

Who really cares about most little magazines? 

Eventually not even their own contributors 

Who having published a few preliminary sestinas

Send their work East to prove they’re no longer students. 

They need to be recognized as the new arbiters of taste

So they can teach their own graduate workshops. 

Where will it end? This grim cycle of workshops

Churning out poems for little magazines

No one honestly finds to their taste? 

This ever-lengthening column of contributors 

Scavenging the land for more students

Teaching them to write their boot camp sestinas? 

Perhaps there is an afterlife where all contributors

Have two workshops, a tasteful little magazine, and sexy 

Students

Who worshipfully memorize their every sestina. 

The Poem Wants a Drink - Karen Glenn

In the workshop, students analyze
what each poem wants, what each one
strives to be. Well, this poem is
a layabout with limited ambitions. It wants
a drink.

This poem doesn't give a damn
for rhyme or reason. It only sings
off-key. It has no rhythm
in the jukebox of its soul.
It grew up without symbols.
It doesn't know from assonance.
Give it mambo lessons, and it
still won't learn to dance. It has
not one stanza with a lyric pedigree.
It's late, and getting later, and this poem
wants a drink.

Call it gray and tired. Even call it
a cliche. This poem's lived long enough
to know exactly what it means
to say: Don't be stingy
with the whiskey, baby.
.....Yes, the night
has been a cruel one, and this poem
could use a drink.

Funny Poems About Poetry

Ars Poetica - Sammy 

writing poetry is like taking a

flight, somehow you move

thousands of miles/hour

through the air, but all

you really think about

is the annoying baby

crying in the seat

behind you while

the guy next to

you tries to talk

to you when

you clearly

just want

to sleep,

but no,

you can’t sleep because the emergency

alarm has gone off and before you know

it you are fully aware of the speed 

because you’re falling, faster and faster, 

down into the real world, but soon

enough you forget about the speed at

which you fall and instead worry about

your bags; what will come of your gifts

if the bags don’t arrive on time? What

will you say to your friends? Your family?

You cannot return without them. The

airline better not mess it up like they did

that one time in Chicago. Such terrible

memories. You prep yourself on what

you’ll say to customer service when the

bags don’t get in. Start a bit aggressive

with a hint of desperation, ask to speak

with the manager, no, demand it, but

don’t be too demanding. It’s an art, the

art of complaining. Like any other art

it requires much patience and discipline 

in order to fall so fast without even a passing thought about reality.

Guide to Writing Modern Poetry - Yvonne Zipter

Write like you don’t mean it.
Spill nothing but soft vowels
into hard consonants that roll
heavily over everything, obliterating
sense. Scatter in the strange words
that mesmerize: shiny objects
to distract from your lack of reason:
to make meaning is treason.
Pangolin scales articulate.
Ribbons spool like gastropod shells.
A paper nautilus is an argonaut—
wait: that means something. Scratch that.
What I meant to say is nothing,
then put it on your plate for you
to unscramble and digest like sand.

Skill Set—Poet - Christine Llocek-Lim

Sometimes I speak in verse—
iambic lines, or worse,
trochee. It’s like a curse
I cannot stop. Perverse,
the rhymes infect, transverse,
coerce my brain. “Disperse!”
I shout. “Be still,” my nurse
responds, his voice so terse
I know I’ve gone insane.
He binds my wrists. I strain
against the bed, my brain
awhirl with mad disdain
until the meds constrain
the meter gone profane
and bold: a hurricane
of poems I can’t explain.
“Spondee,” I moan.
“Sestina. Sonnet. Koan
Limerick. Xylophone…”
And then the heavy stone
of anesthetic thrown
from syringe to bone
descends. I wake alone.
No ode, no pain, no throne
composed of metered tones
and stately palindromes
contaminate my words.
I’m sane.
And sad.
My mouth a hearse—
dead letters disperse
against my teeth. The nurse
appears. His smile is vain.
He says, “We’ve fixed your brain.”
I scowl. He frowns. I feign
civility. “My purse?”
I ask. “The universe
awaits.” He shoves it close.
I ease the zipper wide
to show the poems I hide
for rainy days and snide
remarks. Unjustified
restraints cannot divide
my mind for long. I hide
my plans, re-versified
and calm. For now. They tried
to break my muse. I bide
my time until the worst
miasma fades, and Verse
slips back into a poem
or two, or more: a tome!
Oh, poetic loon,
how sweet it feels to croon
aloud the song of moon
and line. Iambic swoons
and dactyl foot balloons
unhinge my afternoon—
a perfect honeymoon
from sane pursuits too soon
applied with syringe or spoon,
a brutal, dulling dose
of anodyne. No verse.
No rhyme. Just prose. A curse
devoid of rhyme. “No pun
for that!” I say. The nurse
returns. I close my purse
and run.

My Own Examples of Poems About Writing Poetry

Truth

I wrote a poetry book because 

I didn’t have the skills to write anything else. 

Not saying poets have no talent, 

Just that I don’t.

The Bard

It was delusional to think

That writing poetry would be

Anything more than

Spending half the time 

Actually writing, 

And half the time mourning 

The loss of ideas

That popped out of my head 

Just as quickly 

As they popped into it.

Inspiration Chooses YOU

Every time I think 

I couldn’t possibly find any more inspiration 

From the rain, 

Another drizzle comes, 

And suddenly my pen

Returns to my hand. 

No, I Don’t Wear Beanies or Listen to Coldplay

Everyone says that in order to get your book published, 

You need an agent. And to find an agent, 

You should look in the Acknowledgements section 

Of books like yours because

More often than not, the author names their agent. 

But I guess I only read underground, indie hipster poetry because 

Not only do none of these people seem to have agents, 

But the one time I found one I looked her up on Google to find 

That she died in 2013. 

Of course she did. 

A Literary Paradox 

It’s difficult because, 

In order to write poetry I need to live, 

But in order to survive the living, 

I need to write poetry. 

Self Expressed

Tried to write a poem that doesn’t start with “I.”

You know, for some variety. 

Unfortunately, poetry is a deeply personal art, 

And even third-person poems reveal 

Far too much about the writer within. 

So I guess it doesn’t matter what word I

Start my poem with; you’re bound to realize 

Far too much about me anyway. 

The Mona Risa

I possess no painting skills. 

But there’s something about 

Famous paintings that makes you

Want to notice every single detail

Of a person. Or makes you want 

Someone to notice every detail 

Of you. Devotion is so real

When you put it on paper. 

That’s why I write; so that 

All of these sleepless nights 

Mean something. I want to write

Poems that people love so much

That they immortalize them. I want

To stand before them in a museum

In my next life and become 

re-enamored with the words; words 

that make it feel like they were 

Written by someone who 

Truly knows my heart. 

I watched a movie last night. 

In it, a burlesque dancer dies on

Stage, but the audience thinks it’s part

Of the act. How surreal it must have

Been, to die to the sounds of applause.