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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/48631
License name: CC BY-SA 4.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/48631
License name: CC BY-SA 4.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

First, you need to identify what you personally consider "powerful" words, or poems, or sentences in fiction. Make a collection of the things you love.

Once you have a collection of what impresses you, or moves you, then you can move on to analysis: Try to understand why exactly you feel like the authors found the perfect word, the perfect imagery. Is there a surprise in it, something that startles the reader, some word or phrase or juxtaposition if images that made a new connection for you?

Before you can do something on purpose, you need to understand what works and why. You can't just memorize rules of grammar or rhythm or rhyme. Rules will help, they will let you write something that is needed a sonnet or haiku or Acrostic, but they aren't enough to stir emotions in people, which is the purpose of poetry.

To stir emotion, you need to connect imagery and particular words with emotion. Different words carry different emotions; "heart" and "green" are examples. Some imagery invokes different emotion, there is a difference in feeling between "rowing at night on a sleepy sea" and "rowing quietly across the ripples of blue".

Collect what you love. Figure out how to sort it into categories. Figure out what the categories have in common. Understand why certain words, phrases and constructions work for you, so you can apply the rules YOU discover and develop to your own poetry.

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