Deborah Bacharach
11 Ways of Writing About a Blackbird. . .or Anything
Maybe you love description. You can spend an entire poem detailing the smell of a new shoe, the squeak it makes across a kitchen floor. Maybe you excel at similes. You are ready to tell us all about the girl who wants to drink death like soup.
Description, simile, I love both these ways of conveying information. But these are just two options. There are so many more, and sometimes we get in a rut. Changing up the ways we convey information in a poem jolts the reader in a new and exciting direction, and frankly, it does the same for us as writers. Changing strategies isn’t just like changing from carrying passengers in a bus to flying them in a plane; it’s how we discover some of our passengers are actually elephants.
As a generative or revision option, I really recommend trying all these ways of writing (rhetorical strategies as they are sometimes called) in the same poem. Not because they are all going to stay but to see what they reveal.
Here are 11 strategies with examples.
- Claim—The blackbird’s song is the most beautiful.
- Command—Stay away from my home.
- Concession—I admit I have trespassed. I admit I have done wrong.
- Description—On the broken music box where the blackbird balances, one foot wobbles.
- Dialogue—“I did not ask to be common,” the bird said to the man.
- Facts—A blackbird can live anywhere in England.
- Metaphor or Simile—Her wings were black as midnight as moonlight as a kiss before dawn.
- Narrative—Three blackbirds went winging through the woods one day.
- Question—Whose death do I portend?
- Secret—When McCartney sings, “take these broken wings and learn to fly,” he is calling for Black lives.
- Wisdom statement— No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings. (William Blake)
In addition to giving us a chance to change up energy, tone, and direction in our own poems, knowing these different strategies is a great way to learn from other poets. As we are reading, we can map the moves that authors make, try out their patterns, and discover new strategies to try.
Deborah Bacharach is the author of Shake & Tremor (Grayson Books, 2021) and After I Stop Lying (Cherry Grove Collections, 2015). Her work has recently appeared in Poetry East, Last Syllable, and Grist among many other journals, and she has received a Pushcart prize honorable mention. She is a poetry reader for SWWIM and Whale Road Review. Find out more about her at DeborahBacharach.com.
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