Nikos Tselepides

WRITING A GOOD BAD POEM

If you want to write a good bad poem
i.e. a poem all will like but will find very unusual
i.e. the kind of poem they are not used to
and the kind teachers dismiss as bad
but editors and poets love, do the following:
Do not put much of yourself in it, and set
your ego aside. Keep away from expressing
your dreams too much, and from all the accessories
of your usual self. Write about what is around you
by observing it and reporting it in clear, common-sense
language. The common-place is just as strong
as the unusual and the unknown, and even stronger.
People do not see it in general and are stunned
when someone exposes what they knew was there
but regarded as granted and unworthy of celebration.
Do not write lines of the type “ I love you
and pray we shall be together always” and all their endless
ramifications. That is unoriginal. Show the same meaning
by writing something like “ You walk in smiling,
dressed in red, and carrying hope for my eyes in yours”—
it means the same thing and sounds better and
has images. Do not be afraid of prosaic style
like you see in this poem so far. If you are
you’ll end up writing sing-song rhymes like
“With him I want my love to show
and all the world to know”, a statement of the general
communal abstract self, only good for the dustbin.
Assert your opinions, assess the view. That is different
from asserting your ego—your comments on what you see
are valuable and things like the lines below work:
“We made a fire with our own constituent thoughts
and sizzled in it for a while. The wind spread it quickly
to the valley and the towns below, and we supervised
the clean burn till only the ashes of experience were left.”
That is asserting the self through the world around us.
Keep away from unclarity. Ask yourself if others
will understand all lines without explanation comments
and take out what does not fit this measuring yardstick
though you can keep some nuances here and there
for spice. Here is a good example: “Grant me
the peace and pace of butterflies,the sweetness of honey
in my wording, the softness of flower petals in my touch.”
You will note that everyone will understand these lines
and the door is half-open to the miracle called poetry.
They only need to give it a slight push and in they go.
You will be as harmless as a baby’s bite but as dangerous as a snake.
Follow my advice but bear me no grudge, neither gifts, nor praise:
I have done, in this poem for you, what the masters prescribed
with small, excusable deviations to fit you like a glove, dear reader.



Nikos Tselepides
30th November 2006
Athens, Greece
Important Note: Some of the quoted lines come from my works in progress.
I happen to be a published and established poet and have been getting published since 1968.