In 2009, I sat in my room, the door slightly ajar, with a floral green spiral notebook, staring at a blank page that was practically interrogating me, asking, Why are you even here?
I then proceeded to start writing a poem for the first time. And you know how people say you shouldn’t be so hard on your work? In this case, I think I can make an exception. It was one of the worst poems I’ve ever written.
It was called Insignificantly, a short motivational poem. The opening line was:
“If we see everything so insignificantly, we can’t lead the life we want to lead and can’t succeed.”
And I thought it was the greatest thing ever. Seventeen years later, I’m extremely thankful for that moment. The small rebellion I had against my imposter syndrome bloomed into me becoming a much better writer and observer of life.
But what I realize is that Insignificantly wasn’t a bad poem because of the message. It wasn’t all that great because I didn’t completely understand the literary devices that could have made it a great poem.
So here are three literary devices that have completely shaped me as a poet.
Imagery
Imagery is descriptive language that plays on the five senses. And since everybody experiences the world in different ways, my description of something might be so unique in its own right that the best way to go about creating imagery in my writing is to be as specific as possible.
Because you weren’t there in 2018 when my best friend was called to walk the stage for graduation, and he walked with heavy steps, shaking the nervousness of the moment off while ascending stone slabs to shake the hands of a president whose smile pierced through his indifference, to shake his hands with enough force that it looked like a fidget spinner losing energy, and proceeded to grab his degree and erupt into a dance that looked like his legs were devoid of bones.
As someone who has experienced that moment, I have to bring my reader to that scene as if they were sitting right next to me. The more you can picture yourself in the world the writer is trying to create, the better, in my opinion.
So if you’re a beginner who is just starting out, I would spend a lot of focused practice trying to get your imagery together by describing random things that you come across, looking at a scene in a movie, or taking a picture of your surroundings in real life, and using focused practice to describe what is happening in as much detail and specificity as you can.
Simile
I was introduced to simile not through traditional poetry, but through hip-hop.
I remember listening to rap artists such as Lupe Fiasco, Lil Wayne, and Wale craft these dense verses that were filled with witty bars and dynamic storytelling. But I was able to boil a lot of their lines down to their use of similes at certain punch lines that drove certain points home.
My favorite simile that I’ve ever come across in hip-hop was a very simple one in the song “International Players Anthem,” in which André 3000 said, “You know we got your back like chiroprac-tic,” which was a really good line because it plays on the literal and figurative meanings of got your back.
In my own work, simile is used to subvert expectations. I’m always thinking of ways to compare something to something you never would have thought could be related to the original subject.
For example:
I’m drawn, like fictional characters under pencils to women with follicles like vortices falling in mild tantrums around their faces.
That line is an excerpt from one of my unpublished poems, where I play on the word drawn, as in being attracted to someone, and drawn, as in actually drawing something. I compare the act of being drawn to somebody to drawing something, like fictional characters under pencils.
I compare the attraction to the act of drawing to set up another simile in which I describe a specific type of woman who has her hair styled in a certain way.
But there are so many things you can use to make a simile great, and you can package it in different spots in your writing to create a great effect for your reader.
Personification
When I would sit in creative writing class, I would always be so immersed in the poetry sections, but there was one concept that kept nipping at me.
What if I just wrote a poem as if I were this thing?
I thought that would be cool, to think like an object or something that wasn’t human and give it some life.
My first attempt at this was a poem about a swing set. Not just any swing set, but a swing set that’s still sitting in the backyard of my parents’ house, rusted, keeled over, and ancient in swing set years. And in my mind, all I could think of was: I wonder how it might feel.
That one thought unlocked a whole poem. That poem began:
I sink under a hill, bent and broken, fighting to not return to the Earth. The people that played with me are in places I’ll never get to see.
I realized that giving human emotions, habits, speech, and patterns to inanimate objects can sometimes unlock feelings and empathy that we never would have had.
In a way, it forces us to treat things that aren’t human better once we imagine what their perspective could be if they were sentient. Since personification begs you to use empathy for something that isn’t human, it’s a good exercise to make you more aware of your surroundings and more conscious about the actions that you take daily.
In conclusion
All literary devices are important in their own right, even the ones that aren’t as well known.
If you’re looking for ways to see the world in more creative ways and sharpen your writing, try out these three devices. I think they’ll be useful to you next time you’re sitting in your room, at a coffee shop, or in nature, writing a poem or novel or anything else and dreaming about what it could be.
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Kevin Johnson is a poet, educator, and performer with more than 15 years of experience writing, performing, and teaching poetry. He is the author of the self-published poetry collection Neutron Star and has also had work published in literary journals such as The Broadkill Review. Known online as KevJ.Poetry, Kevin creates literary education content centered around poetry, literary devices, writing craft, and helping writers break through the imposter syndrome that keeps them from sharing their work. He is also the author behind the Substack publication Your Poetry Doesn’t Suck.