Sage Cohen's Tip A Day: Study Shape Through Line

Editor’s Note: Throughout the month of April, Reading Local and Portland poet Sage Cohen will celebrate National Poetry Month by featuring a new tip each day.

April 13: Study shape through line

Find a published poem with line breaks you admire. Write your own poem that imitates the pattern of the line lengths and the types of words at the end of each line. If the first line of the example poem is a complete sentence, yours should be, too. Where a descriptive image continues from one line to the next, yours should do the same. Try to end each line with the same kind of energy or resonance as your example poem does. Notice how this type of attention influences the evolution of your poem.

Sage Cohen is the author of WRITING THE LIFE POETIC: An Invitation to Read and Write Poetry (Writers Digest Books, 2009), THE PRODUCTIVE WRITER: Tips & Tools for Writing More, Stressing Less and Creating success (Writer’s Digest Books, forthcoming in 2010) and the poetry collection Like the Heart, the World. Learn more at www.writingthelifepoetic.typepad.com.

Image credit Poets.org.