Writing About Your Morning Routine Without Writing a Boring Poem

The morning routine is the most ordinary subject in poetry and the most likely to be a list. A judge on the three moves that turn a morning poem into a real one, the test that tells you if the poem is about the routine or about you, and the one image that always works.

The morning routine is the most ordinary subject in poetry, and it is the most likely to be a list. Every contest pile has a stack of morning poems that are about the coffee and the shower and the commute, and the list is the thing that makes the poem a diary entry instead of a poem.

The morning poem that works is not about the routine. It is about the person who is in it.

The list trap

The list poem is the one that tells you what the morning looks like. The coffee, the shower, the commute, the way the day starts. It is accurate and it is flat, because the routine is the subject and the subject is the one thing the reader already knows.

A poem about a morning routine should not describe the routine. It should describe what the routine does to the person who is in it.

The three moves that turn a morning poem into a real one

Move one: put a person in it. The morning poem that works has a person in it, a self, a partner, a child. The morning is the stage; the person is the play. The poem is about the person in the morning, not the morning itself.

Move two: give the morning a body. The morning should be doing something to the body, the hands that are holding the cup, the eyes that are looking at the light, the feet that are on the floor. If the morning is just sitting there, it is a backdrop. If it is doing something to the body, it is a subject.

Move three: let the morning change you. The best morning poems are the ones where the speaker is different at the end than they were at the beginning, and the morning is the thing that changed them. The morning is the agent; the poem is the change.

The question that decides

Here is the question I ask when I am judging a morning poem: is this poem about the routine, or is it about the person in the routine? If the answer is the routine, it is a list. If the answer is the person, it is a poem.

The list poem says 'this is what I do'. The real morning poem says 'this is what the morning does to me'. The difference is the difference between a diary and a life.

A worked example

Bad: 'I wake up and I make coffee and I take a shower and I go to work.' The routine is the subject; the speaker is absent.

Better: 'I have learned to make the coffee the way my father did, and I have become the person who holds the cup the way he held it.' The morning is the agent; the speaker is the person who is changed by it. The poem is about the person who has been changed by the morning, not the morning itself.

Where it goes wrong

The trap is the poem that is a list of the routine. The list is not a poem; it is a schedule. The poem is the thing that the morning did to the person who was in it, and the doing is the work.

If you want to see a morning poem that is about the person, the prompts library has a set on the everyday and the self, and the contest window is open when the draft is ready. The morning is the stage. The person is the play.

Keep reading

For the craft side, the morning collection covers the deeper method. The imagery module is the page to read next, and the contest is where the work goes when it is done.

By Writory Editorial, for Writory.

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