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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/42381
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/42381
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

In my own very brief experimentation with poetry, I always found it helpful to **start with the image** , the symbolism, as it were. So I wouldn't be "giving my poem more symbolism" - I'd start with the picture in my mind, and write the poem around that. In that fashion, I could replace words with synonyms, shift words around, scrape everything and start from scratch with a different rhyming scheme, and the core idea of the poem would remain the same.

So, for example, in this poem (written in highschool), I started with the image of "war orphan himself going to war - phoenix, dying so his son can be born":

> Like a phoenix, I was born from the ashes.  
> When the fires of battle have died,  
> In the air rang my life's first cry.
> 
> I have never known my father -  
> The phoenix is orphaned from birth,  
> But I've been raised like all others,  
> Learning both of sorrow and mirth.
> 
> I have been like all other teenagers,  
> Finding true love's kisses' first joy.  
> I've got work, I am earning my wages,  
> And my wife has begotten a boy.
> 
> Lo! Of battle again rings the cry.  
> In the fires of battle I die,  
> But my son will be born from the ashes.

It's not a good poem, but because it is not good, it is easy to see in it how everything is built on the image at the core. (In Shakespeare's work, everything fits together perfectly and seamlessly, so it's harder to pick it apart and say "this came first".)

It's not an approach that would always work. For example, it might be that you are trying to tell a story in verse. In such a case, the story, not a particular picture, is at the heart of what you're writing, and everything else has to embellish _that_. But it is one approach, that you might find helpful, if only for practice.

Original score: 3