Equations in Poems

Writing poems has often felt like working out a math problem to me; intuiting where a sound should go or how many words per line gives my brain the same workout as solving for x. Every poem follows an equation. If you work in a traditional form, the equation is super simple like addition or multiplication, for example, the sonnet: ABAB, CDCD, EFEF GG in iambic pentameter. But contemporary free verse poetry ranges from calculus to quantum mechanics.

Equations can involve elements of sound, number of syllables, words per line, parallels and juxtaposition, chiasm, number of stanzas, metaphor, reiteration and chorus, etc. A good poem builds an equation out of the subject matter. For example, Robin Coste Lewis’ poem, “Summer”:

Summer

Last summer, two discrete young snakes left their skin
on my small porch, two mornings in a row. Being

postmodern now, I pretended as if I did not see
them, nor understand what I knew to be circling

inside me. Instead, every hour I told my son
to stop with his incessant back-chat. I peeled

a banana. And cursed God—His arrogance,
His gall—to still expect our devotion

after creating love. And mosquitoes. I showed
my son the papery dead skins so he could

know, too, what it feels like when something shows up
at your door—twice—telling you what you already know.

--

At its most basic level, this poem is about two snakes, so the equation for the poem calls for 2-line (couplet) stanzas. Among other things, the equations calls for:

1. Both lines of first and last stanza have variation of the word “two” in them: “two,” “two,” “too,” “twice.”
2. The two snakes are paralleled by two human characters
3. Six sentences across six stanzas.
4. The first line of the penultimate stanza encompasses three sentences, with one full-stopped sentence in the middle.
5. After this short sentence, a long sentence follows to end the poem.
6. Enjambment of all lines.
7. In the fourth stanza, first line ends with “His ____” and second line begins “His ____”

And so on. You can lift this equation from the poem and write a new poem based on it, that will likely be pretty decent. Why? Because every good poem has a good equation behind it. The subject matter and vocabulary complete a poem, but the equation performs a lot of the heavy lifting. Compare Mark Doty’s “A Display of Mackerel" with my poem using aspects of its equation: “Bruises”. I think “Bruises” is better than most of my poems on this blog, and while I did contribute my own vocabulary to create images that are not Doty’s, the poem’s success is because it’s build on Doty’s master equation.

At our novice level, I recommend finding poems you like and trying to break them down into their equations, then writing poems using those equations. The as you grow aware of equations and their interlocking parts, you internalize them, and can later build your own.