I’m a big advocate for reading poetry. It’s easily my favorite form of literature; I love to write it and I love to read it. Poetry is extremely diverse and has as much variation, if not more, than other genres of literature. As soon as I got into poetry, I saw my writing go from around average to actually publishable. We know the best thing you can do for your writing is to read more and write more, but what can specific genres offer us? Below I have created a list of 5 reasons why and how poetry can help you write better.

Poetry encourages you to be more precise.

In poetry, every single word counts. A main point of poetry is to say something in as few words as possible, to focus on an economy of language. You don’t have the time to dance around your subject because you will lose your audience. You have to be able to say what is vital without getting lost in rambling sentences. This precision can translate into other genres and help keep your thoughts organized and your prose tight.

Poetry teaches you to say things in more interesting and creative ways.

My personal style of poetry focuses on dissonance—while this is not everyone’s style, it was the style of the Beat Generation, a group of proto-hippies from the late ’40s and early ’50s who mastered cognitive dissonance in imagery to write some of the most beautiful lines in the American canon.

Allen Ginsberg writes, “who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,” in his world-famous poem, Howl. This mix has the angelic faltering—but angels are supposed to be perfect. So in this conflicting image, we can feel heaven coming closer to earth and we make sense of Ginsberg’s line.

Poetry can inspire you to play around with form.

Poetry can mix styles of literature—I’ve read poems about chemical processes, religious poems, poems that are practically manifestos—and poetry can also play with the physical shape it takes. Concrete poetry (or shape poetry) plays around with physical form to make images like trees or triangles or truly anything out of the lines of a poem.

Poetry teaches you to pay attention to rhythm.

My favorite thing about poetry is the musicality of it. While classically, a lot of poems are written in meter, a lot of poetry of the 1940s (the Beat Generation is iconic, what can I say?) broke that age-old tradition and broke form. It was a revolutionary act at the time, and nowadays it’s hard to find poetry written in meter, but that does not mean poetry is lacking in rhythm.

If music is your thing, I highly recommend listening to slam poetry. It has close ties to the rap genre. In fact, George Watsky got his start in rap from writing and performing slam. Kendrick Lamar’s rap sounds distinctly like slam. If you’re still not sure whether or not you’ll like reading poetry, start by listening; let slam be your guide to this unique art-form.

Poetry is more down-to-earth and open than any other style.

If you know me in real life, you’re sick of hearing me say this, but I’ll say it again: poetry is for the proletariat. You can write amazing poetry without a large vocabulary or an in-depth knowledge of form or having read a ton of other poetry.

Some of the most iconic poetry has been written by people who were poor. The same could not be said for fiction. Shakespeare was not wealthy, in college Edgar Allan Poe had to burn his furniture to keep warm, and Whitman hardly saw a moment of success from his poetry.

Poetic talent does not tinge on race, sex, or sexuality either. Surely you’ve heard of Syliva Plath or Maya Angelou or Langston Hughes. How about Audre Lorde? Rupi Kaur?

The bar to entry is so much higher for other forms of literature, which is why I say poetry is for the proletariat—they every man. There are successful rich, white, male poets as well, but is their poetry really not very interesting when you consider that incredible poetry can come from addicts like Baudelaire, queer people like Sam Sax, and so many others who truly represent the fabric of our society.

It is the most open and accessible form of literature there is. You can learn so much about writing, though, and even life from a single poem; and that is why reading poetry can improve your writing.

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About Jessi Quinn Alperin

Jessi Quinn Alperin (they/them) is a recent graduate of the University of Pittsburgh. While there, they served as an editor for Forbes & Fifth for two years. Their poetry has been published by 70 Faces and Haunted Zine and they have also had a personal essay published in Twentyhood Magazine and two articles published for Environmental Health News. Jessi previously self-published a collection of poetry they had written between 2013-2017. They are currently a Social Justice Springboard Fellow for Oberlin College’s Hillel.