How to Start a Poem (When You Don’t Know Where to Start)

How do you start a poem? Where does it start? What does the poet do to step inside a poem? Writing poetry can feel daunting, particularly when the blank page stays blank and stares at you, waiting to be imbued with meaning. If you’re stuck and wondering how to start a poem, you’re in the right place.

Starting a poem requires patience with the process and close attention to language. The same can be said of writing a poem in general. Nonetheless, this article offers tips, advice, and insights into the mystical process of putting pen to paper.

Along the way, we’ll look at examples of contemporary poetry with stunning opening lines, and discuss what the start of a poem ought to accomplish. Let’s get into the weeds of how to start a poem.

How to Start a Poem: What the Beginning Accomplishes

There are no strict rules for how to start a poem. When we look at some examples of opening lines, each poem’s beginning will accomplish something unique to the poems themselves. So, don’t assume your poem needs to do all of the following, but do note that many great poems begin with some of the following traits.

Here are some ways to start a poem. The beginning of a poem might:

• Ask a provocative question: What can you ask that the reader hasn’t asked before? Can you reshape the world in a single question?
  • Example: “Tired of Love Poems” by Megan Fernandes
• Use beautiful, attention-grabbing language: A good poem might wake the reader up by using language in unexpected ways.
  • Example: “Riddle at 29,000 Feet” by Tracy Brimhall
• Set the scene: If the poem takes place in a specific location, maybe the poem starts with that location.
  • Example: “Heaven” by Franz Wright
• Have an entertaining or eye-catching title: A good title can situate us in the world of the poem.
  • Example: “When We’re in Bed and You Take Out Your Mouth Guard, I Know It’s On” by Melissa Crowe
• Instantly get to the heart of something: Good poetry sometimes gets straight to the point.
  • Example: “Mountain Dew Commercial Disguised as a Love Poem” by Matthew Olzmann
• Create a sense of wonder or mystery: A poem may start by drawing the reader into mystery.
  • Example: “The Shortest Night” by Victoria Chang
• Begin with a central metaphor: Poetry often relies on metaphor to convey deeper, hard-to-access truth, and starting with metaphor can certainly immerse the reader.
  • Example: “Summer Was Forever” by Chen Chen.
• Begin a story: Some poems are more narrative in nature, so they begin at the beginning, or even in media res.
  • Example: “The Language of the Birds” by Richard Siken

There are many other ways to start a poem, but these ways feel common in contemporary poetry. The through line of all of these possibilities is that the beginning pulls the reader into the world of the poem. That’s often the hardest part of writing good poetry: opening the door to the reader and hoping they cross that threshold.

The beginning pulls the reader into the world of the poem.

If that sounds like a lot of pressure for poetry, you’re not alone in feeling like the stakes are high. But, don’t think of these possibilities as “goals” for your poem. Rather, think of them as the end result of good drafting and editing, which we’re about to explore further.

The Initiating Subject Vs. The Generated Subject

A useful distinction for poets as they start and work on their poems is the difference between the initiating subject and the generated subject. These are terms coined by the poet Richard Hugo; you can read about them in his craft book The Triggering Town, or get the TL;DR at this LitHub article.

In short, the initiating subject is the reason you started writing the poem, whether it was a writing prompt, a stroke of inspiration, or whatever it is that brought you to the blank page.

The generated subject is what gets uncovered by the poet as they write the poem. All poems are an act of discovery, and a poet often stumbles into meanings they themselves didn’t intend.

All poems are an act of discovery, and a poet often stumbles into meanings they themselves didn’t intend.

Understanding this distinction can be incredibly freeing for poets. Just because you started a poem about the ocean doesn’t mean it needs to stay about the ocean; a good poem will inevitably traverse other themes. And no two poets will write the same ocean poems. Mine might be about relationships; yours might be about your mother.

All of this is to take the pressure off of writing a first draft. There is no “wrong” place to start a poem. Start anywhere, see what ideas you develop, and then sculpt the raw material you write into a revised poem. The most important thing to do is start. 

How to Start a Poem: Examples From Contemporary Poetry

Let’s look at how to start a poem off, with examples from contemporary poets. Pay close attention to the poem’s start, and how it makes the poem’s entirety possible.

“The Voice of God” by Mary Karr

Retrieved here, from Commonweal Magazine.

There is so much to discuss just in the first three lines of this poem, which the following lines really just rehash and explore in different lights. The irony and humor here cannot be ignored: it’s bold to start a poem addressing what’s wrong with the reader. And pay attention to how the line breaks allow the poem’s meaning to evolve with surprise: an address to what’s wrong with you; an unexpectedly simple cure; an ironic commentary on the source of God’s voice. Why the bowels of the subway?

I love this poem for its unflinching candor and perspective on human behavior. We desire big changes, and believe God’s enormity results in enormous acts, but Karr’s poem tells us the opposite: the changes in our lives are found in the minuscule and everyday. Although I think the poem really is its first three lines, they do set up an excellent ending: “put down that gun, you need a sandwich.”

“Poem Number Two on Bell’s Theorem, or The New Physicality of Long Distance Love” by June Jordan

Retrieved here, from Academy of American Poets.

About half of this short poem is its long title, and while some long-titled poems are better off with short titles, this title does a lot of excellent work. For reference, Bell’s Theorem is a theorem from quantum physics. Clumsily summarized, it theorizes that events in the universe are linked together at a quantum level, and those events influence each other without touching each other. An atom’s movement at one end of the universe might influence an atom’s movement at the other end, and that influence occurs faster than the speed of light can allow. This theorem helps set apart quantum physics from classical physics, which is the physics you learned in high school—things like velocity and mass.

If that doesn’t make sense to you, don’t worry, this isn’t an article about physics. The point is that the title does excellent work, and the poem’s three lines are beautiful even if you don’t understand the concept. Despite the fact that this love poem is written in the language of science, there’s a beautiful, analytic romance underlying these words, a declaration that the poem’s two subjects are quantumly linked, and nothing will ever break that bond. Because, you know, physics.

“Arrhythmia” by Hailey Leithauser

Retrieved from Poetry Out Loud.

This is a poem that leans expertly into metaphor, and does so straightaway. This is a poem that resists easy interpretation or linear meaning, and does so musically and delightfully. I can’t stop repeating the line “The fey mouse heart rides a dawdy dust-cart” to myself, it’s so jaunty and fun to say. I love this poem’s close attention to language—it’s even a sonnet, but the volta is more a shift in syntax than a shift in meaning.

Certainly spend time wrestling with the metaphors. Why is a bear’s heart a cloud-shuttered mountain? Why is the heart of a swan, a swan? But after you’re done wrestling, tap out and experience the poem without trying to understand or interpret or “make sense”—you’ll find, paradoxically, it is easier to understand the poem when you aren’t trying to.

Ways to Start a Poem (When You Don’t Know Where to Start)

We’ve looked at some concrete ways to start a poem, as well as examples of good poem beginnings. But, what about that other way to start—as in, quite literally, how do you figure out the first words and put them on the page?

Let’s talk about how to start writing a poem. If you’re stressed about starting, creatively blocked, or otherwise just can’t bring yourself to the page with confidence, these ways to start a poem can take the pressure off.

How to Start a Poem: Freewriting

Freewriting can take the pressure off from trying to write a capital-P Poem. Instead of worrying about craft elements and line breaks, just get your thoughts on the page.

Freewriting is simply writing what comes to mind, similar to stream-of-consciousness. A freewrite doesn’t need to be linear or make sense: just write what arises and follow your brain’s trains of association.

You can also prompt your freewrites, whether by finding writing prompts online or by reading poems that inspire you. (This is what students do in Susan Vespoli’s Writing Circles!)

After you’ve freewritten for 10 or 15 minutes, look back at what you’ve written down and see if you can sculpt it into a poem. You’ll find that the freewriting process helps loosen up your writing muscles and get you acquainted with your thoughts and feelings, making the doorways into a poem much more apparent.

How to Start a Poem: Write Everything First, Pick a Beginning Later

This is similar advice to the above. If you don’t know where to start, don’t worry about it: write everything and figure out the beginning later.

I’ll sometimes do this if I have a lot to say on a topic but don’t know where to start. I’ll write in verse, but I won’t try to write from start to end: rather, I’ll jot down lines, stanzas, metaphors, imagery, even just words I know I want to use.

Once I’ve done this, the start of the poem still might not be clear. But I’ll have material that I can stitch together into a working first draft, and through that process, the start will start to emerge, especially when I consider how I need to invite the reader into the poem’s world.

How to Start a Poem: Don’t Try to “Be Poetic”

Poets sometimes freeze on the page because they feel the need to “be poetic.” In other words, they feel an obligation to use language that is elevated and artful, symbolic and metaphoric, nuanced and ripe for interpretation.

That’s a big obligation, and truthfully, it doesn’t always lead to better poetry—sometimes simple language is far better.

But, more to the point, there’s no such thing as a perfect first draft. Trying to force one out is inhibiting yourself as a writer, and preventing you from even getting started. Allow yourself to write plainly and un-poetically—your intuition will let you know if there are better ways to say what you need to say, but you can’t know if you don’t start somewhere.

Say what you need to in the plainest language possible.

A good piece of advice for all poets is to say what they need to in the plainest language possible. That’s different than “only write using plain language,” because plain language isn’t capable of expressing the full breadth of human emotion. Plenty of artful, elevated, un-plain poems are also using the plainest language possible—they simply can’t be any plainer than what they are.

How to Start a Poem: Start With Form

If you’re a poet who gets excited by form, maybe start there. The restraints of formal poetry might challenge you into the opening lines of the poem, especially forms that restrict the language of the first line, like the villanelle or the ghazal.

In a way, I’ve found that thinking about form helps take the pressure off the opening lines, because I’m thinking about language in a structured way. The language should still be just as good as it is in a free verse poem, but by giving me something to pay attention to that isn’t just language, I can zoom out a little and find the words I’m looking for better.

This is true even for nonce or invented forms. What if you wrote a poem in the shape of a TV script, a listicle, or a tic-tac-toe board? The point is to let form give you a doorway into the poem.

For more on formal poetry, check out our article:

https://writers.com/how-to-write-a-free-verse-poem

How to Start a Poem: Start From the Body

Where do you feel the poem in your body? Write from there.

Obviously, that’s pretty vague. How do you write from your lungs or your armpit? The point is that poetry can be a tool for recalibrating ourselves to our bodies. Let’s say you feel something, and you feel the need to write it into poetry, but you don’t know where to begin. Where do you feel that something in your body? What does it feel like? How are you experiencing your body in that moment?

All of those questions are prompts that can get you into starting your poem. It is totally valid to start a poem with “my armpit aches,” or “my body craves touch.” Maybe you’ll delete that line in revision, but hopefully it does what it was supposed to do—get you to write the next line, and then the next, and then the first draft.

How to Start a Poem: Begin at the End

Maybe you don’t know how to begin a poem, but you know how you want it to end. What if you started at the end?

You can always move the end to the end in revision, but if you know what you want the poem to say, start by saying it, or beginning with the conclusion you thought you were arriving towards. You might find that, actually, the end was the beginning all along, or that you had more to say that you didn’t even realize.

Trying this out will also help reorient your perspective, which is always a useful still for writing poetry. By stepping outside of your own expectations, you can see things with a different sense of clarity. And, again, if the end really was the end, you can move it to the end—now that you’ve generated a first draft with it.

How to Start a Poem: Start Mindfully

Sometimes, starting a poem feels difficult because we can’t find the right words. But they’re certainly there, in our minds, waiting to be released onto the page. When this happens, mindfulness might be your greatest tool.

Mindful writing simply means accepting what arises in the mind without judgment or self-editing. It means slowing down, breathing deeply, and experiencing your thoughts as they happen. This gets easier as you practice it, as does any meditation practice.

So, slow down and focus on your breathing. When your thoughts arise, listen to them, and gently refocus your attention on your breath. The longer you do this and the closer you listen, the more you’ll hear what your brain is trying to put on the page, and the more doorways will arise in the mind.

How to Start a Poem: Use Writing Prompts

Writing prompts are another great way to find doorways into starting a poem. If you want to start a poem, but you’re still in the ideas stage, these websites regularly put out writing prompts or have prompt generators:

• Reedsy
• Poets & Writers
• Poetry Prompt Generator
• Robert Peake

More Resources for Starting a Poem

Here are some additional resources for learning about, and finding inspiration from, poetry.

• How to Write a Poem
• What is Poetry?
• How to Read Poetry
• Learning to Write Poetry

You can also read more about starting a poem here:

https://writers.com/feature/on-starting-a-poem

Start Your Next Poem at Writers.com!

The courses at Writers.com are designed to give you inspiration and motivation. Check out our upcoming online poetry courses, where you’ll write the poems you need to write.