Four Questions To Ask Every Poem

Using the Four Temperaments to Unlock Precision and Power

A poet’s style is as unique as their fingerprint. From sharp, emotional verbs to wild, daring leaps reaching for the surreal, we all have a certain way we like to write. While some might love the order and arc of narrative poetry, others might like the untamed experimentation of language. Every poet comes to the page with different styles, strategies, and preferences. 

On my best days (and in my best drafts), my writing is wild and loose, like driving windows down along the cliffy California coastline, hair messy in the hot August wind. This doesn’t mean I don’t have poems as tidy as a closet at boot camp or stark as a fertility clinic. This just means if you asked me my poetic default, I would not begin with the conventions of logic, even though I’ve come to value them too. While imagination and wildness are what thrill me, I’m always afraid that too much might take away from the structure and story of a poem. 

A truly great poem is a well-balanced ecosystem. It is important that there…