Write a “Bad” Poem

When you try to be “good” it doesn’t always work, but something fascinating happens when you try to be “bad.”

The first poem I wrote that went into my first published chapbook started out as a joke. It was the mid-2000s, back when poets had blogs, and many poets I knew were doing “NaPoWriMo,” or National Poetry Writing Month. The challenge was to write a new poem every day during the month of April and post all these poems on your blog.

I was young, and knew nothing, and found the concept silly. Why privilege quantity over quality, I thought? Why privilege output over process? As if to prove to myself it was foolish, I started a poem, a pseudo-poem maybe, called “Blogpoem for April,” which I tried to write as fast as possible—a throwaway poem, sloppy and no-stakes. I was several lines in when I got confused. I found I wasn’t writing a satire; I was writing a good poem, much better than the poems I had been writing at the time. Without really trying—in fact, by deliberately not trying, or trying not to try—I’d unlocked a new mode.

When you try to be “good” it doesn’t always work, but something fascinating happens when you try to be “bad.” You’re forced to ask yourself what you believe to be bad. What does “bad” really mean? You probably know what offends your moral sensibilities, but outside of that—what would offend you aesthetically? What are you always, maybe unconsciously, trying not to do? This exercise creates a paradoxical intention, much like tricking yourself into falling asleep by trying to stay awake. You’re still the person writing, still on some level attempting to make ART, so inevitably you aim to go beyond mediocre, to be really outlandish or hilariously wrong. You aim to be compellingly bad. It uses different muscles than merely failing to be good—and often leads to accidental greatness.

So, when you’re feeling stuck: Write a bad poem. Write the worst imitation of your favorite poet, or write a “good” imitation of your least favorite poet. Write a cento using all your most hated, dreadful lines. All awful first lines, or all awful last lines. Terrible metaphors. Revise a poem you despise by “translating” it (but into the same language). Don’t remove any moves. Take a failed first draft and make it fail even harder, make it even worse.

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Elisa Gabbert’s new book Normal Distance is out now through Soft Skull Press.