Why is Poetry So Hard? (Or Is It?)

This article is for: Everyone!

A while back, I was listening to an episode of the Poetry Magazine podcast. The host opened the discussion by asking her guests:

“Why is writing so hard, you guys?”

I was really struck by her assumption that poetry must be difficult—that it has always been hard, and will always be.

Although her guests agreed with her, and even though I’ve often asked myself the same question, I couldn’t help but wonder, does poetry have to be challenging?

Or can we in fact make it seem effortless and stress-free?

Because if we could, wouldn’t that mean we could write more, and enjoy ourselves more too?

So in this article, I’m going to give some thoughts about:

Why poetry might not be as hard as it seems, and how to make it feel simpler.

Can Poetry be Easy?

There’s no doubt that writing poetry can be hard.

Surely everyone who writes poetry has had times where they feel that they simply can’t do it.

You might feel uninspired, or not knowledgeable enough, or your confidence might be too low to let you go on.

Times when everything you write seems like junk—or when you can’t even bear to start, because you’re sure that anything you make will be pointless.

Even when it’s not that bad, it’s all too common for creation to involve significant amounts of frustration, self-doubt, and blockage.

This has certainly happened to me. But I don’t think it’s inevitable.

I used to—but over the years, as I’ve figured out more about how creativity can work, I’ve come to agree with poet Andrea Cohen.

She went to a reading of hers in 2015 where she said (more or less), “After all, what we do isn’t so hard, is it? A couple of hours each morning putting some words together? There are plenty of jobs tougher than that.”

I think she encapsulated something very important: **a lot of the difficulty of poetry is really about how we perceive it.**

Yes, poetry does have technical elements that can be demanding, such as meter.

And yes, it can be an immense challenge to convey exactly what you hoped using the clumsy fabric of words, sounds, and layout on the page.

But those are all skills that you can improve by simple practice. If you let yourself build up skill over time, without being disappointed or impatient or anxious, you can make huge progress in those areas in not too long, really.

To my mind, the real problem of poetry is that we get in our own way:

We place unreasonable expectations on ourselves
We compare ourselves unfavorably to others
We think we should be making faster progress
We doubt our work—what we’ve already done, what we’re doing now, and anything we might do in the future—because we lack faith in ourselves.

All of these make the road to poetry very hard, because we are constantly setting up barriers for our own learning, progression, and enjoyment.

On the other hand, consider how much friendlier is the view of writing that Andrea Cohen suggested:

As long as we regularly spend just a short amount of time putting down some words, we’ll make some poetry!

In other words:

If we let ourselves lower the stakes, and think of it as easy, poetry can become easy
If we concentrate mainly on just getting some words together, rather than trying to create a masterwork, that helps too.

So, starting from those ideas, here is my “prescription” to make poetry an easy thing to create, and to enjoy.

It won’t work all the time, and of course it takes time to learn new habits and unlearn the old ones, but if you can do at least some of these things, I am firmly convinced that you can avoid the worst struggles!

**Tips to make writing poetry smooth and enjoyable, almost all the time:**

1. Keep your hopes high—but your expectations low

Yes, we all want to create great poems.

And yes, you can do it, because we all can—that’s my fundamental belief as a teacher of poetry, or I would stop teaching.

So by all means, keep this as your dream.

But don’t expect yourself to do this in any one particular poem, or you’ll block yourself!

You’re much better off deferring that dream of great poems to some other time—next month, next year!

Instead, try to view the poem you’re making now as:

A piece of fun
An experiment
A learning opportunity.

This brings you back to enjoying the process rather than putting pressure on the result—and that’s much easier!

And, over time, it will also lead your creating better poems. But let that happen later.

For now, just remember that this particular poem is not the one that’s going to make you famous or a genius—and enjoy feeling the pressure ease.

2. Approach each writing session as simply “gathering words”

This is really my first point again, but I think it’s worth saying twice!

Each time you sit down to work on a poem, don’t expect too much. Just throw some words around, and see what happens.

This single period of writing is not going to make or break your poem—it might not even move it on at all, and that’s OK! Tomorrow could be different.

Again, thinking this way returns you to freedom and playfulness, instead of tension and pressure. And sometimes, the words you chuck together will work!

3. Write often, and try not to stop

When you’re already writing, writing more is easy!

It’s when you stop that writing starts to seem troublesome or even impossible.

So, a great way to get int Andrea Cohen’s positive view of poetry is to make sure you write frequently.

Ideally, you would make writing a habit—doing it in a regular slot, maybe every day.

Habits are the brain’s way of making complex tasks simple, so make poetry one of your best ones!

4. When you’re getting started again after a break, be extra gentle on yourself

Sometimes we all have to take a break from writing, and getting going again after that break can be intimidating.

In fact, I find this the hardest part of poetry.

At these times, be extra kind to yourself.

Expect that the first few writing sessions will produce nothing but gibberish, really: you are just finding your way back to the groove.

Then you might be pleasantly surprised, and restarting need not be a battle.

5. Be deliberately playful as you write

I already touched on this, but it’s worth making its own separate point.

Creativity loves to play, so the more game-like you can make your writing, the more fun it will become.

For example, try setting yourself a fun creative challenge, such as:

Can I make a poem without using the words “the” or "a"?
How can I make each stanza of a poem exactly 50 syllables, but in different line lengths?

Simple challenges like this are likely to increase your pleasure in the writing, and that makes it seem fun, not intimidating.

And in case you think this is frivolous, I’ll just tell you that I’ve seen some very good poems emerge from tasks like these. The playfulness can free up some serious creativity.

6. Let the process make the poem, rather than you

Lastly, my favorite tip on this topic.

I like to think it’s impossible for me to make a good poem.

I have no idea how to do this, and if I sit down to create one, I reckon I will fail.

All I really know how to do is to move a draft one step further on than it is now:

If it’s a freewrite or pile of notes, I can put those notes in order.
If it’s a long mess, I can cut some parts out.
If the ideas aren’t in order, I can try a new arrangement.
If it needs more content, I can gather some new words—some of which might get added later, though most probably won’t.
If the form isn’t working, I can try out a new one—which also might not work, but there’s always tomorrow.
If a few words seem weak, I can make some list of possible replacements, so I can make a choice some other time.

And so on.

In other words, I am not really the creator of the poem: I just attend to the process.

The process is what makes the poem—and somehow, along the way, some magic might get in there.

Or, it might not! And that’s OK. Most of my poems end up discarded, and that’s OK too. I still enjoyed writing them, and I may have learned something from them.

So, I recommend handing the poem over to some other power (which could also be the Muse, God, the Universe, or your creative unconscious) and letting them worry about it, while you have fun!

I hope these tips free you up when poetry seems hard.