“If you’ve considered the general purpose, audience’s purpose, and the speaker’s purpose, I promise you that your poem will immediately become cohesive. You may even want to try this hack with a poem you are stuck on.” – dimitrireyespoet.com
A lot of the writing process could and should be with revising and editing. These are the stages where your poem can change dramatically and truly become something cohesive. There are many ways in which people decide to edit and while some take the more natural approach poem to poem, some form a methodology— steps to the editing process that the poet does poem to poem. Whether you are a Type A or Type B personality, the editing should always revolve around the purpose of your poem. Therefore, here is a writing hack I use when editing students work, my work, or in a workshop. I call it The Purpose Triangle and this chart aims at tackling the general purpose, the purpose for the poem’s audience, and the purpose of the speaker that is featured in the poem. These three purposes keeps your narrative balanced. It frames your story’s narrative so you stay in the parameters of what exactly is going on.
The General Purpose
The questions you should ask yourself are
- “What’s happening in this poem?”
- “What are you looking to achieve out of the poem?”
- “What are the turns doing?”
- “How is the title communicating with the body of the poem and how does it link back to the purpose of the poem?”
The answers for each section should be written out within 1 to 2 sentences, expect if the question is asking you to make a list. If you find yourself writing more for some of the answers, those may be ideas that you want to look into, especially if they aren’t in your poem. If you explaining your poem in length without any of that in the piece, that is a weak spot.
The Audience's Purpose
- “Is there any prior knowledge that you expect your audience to know?”
- “For those people who don’t have the prior knowledge, would this poem still somehow serve them? How so?”
- “Who is this poem for?”
- “For those whom this poem is for, what should they learn from it?”
- “For those whom this poem isn’t for, what should they learn from it?”
A poet should always be aware of how many people they can reach as there are many ways to share your poetry with an audience. Answering these questions help you determine who will have access to the understandings of this poem. As a tool, a poem is supposed to bring an empathizing between the writer and the reader, but there should always be an element of education. A poem should teach something to the audience, the same way the poem teaches the individual who writes it.
The Speaker's Purpose
- “Does this speaker need to be human in order to feel human?”
- “What does the speaker know in this poem?”
- “What doesn’t the speaker know in this poem?”
Our speakers are very important and they don’t need to be us in the poem. The speaker is a tool that allows us to access different perspectives. Learn more about the speaker from my blog, Be the Speaker, Not the Writer.
If you’ve considered the general purpose, audience’s purpose, and the speaker’s purpose, I promise you that your poem will immediately become cohesive. You may even want to try this hack with a poem you are stuck on.
Teespring
Patreon
