How Learning to Listen Can Improve Your Poetry

For more articles, videos, books, and resources about faith and art, visit RabbitRoom.com.

by Luke Harvey

As a high school English teacher, my work is to teach the Holy Trinity of language arts: Reading, Writing, and Speaking. There is, however, an unspoken fourth art, and it proves to be the one binding the other three together with its invisible thread: Listening. 

As anyone with toddlers, ADD, or just a lot on their plate can attest, hearing is an entirely different animal than listening, and true listening often proves to be a difficult beast to tame. Now of course, reading and speaking—or at least reading and speaking intelligently—require the ability to listen, but a knowledge of how to listen also proves to be the pulse of good writing. So much of writing poetry is learning to pay attention, and one form such attention takes is learning to attune your ear to the elusive voice of language. But be encouraged: as abstract as that may sound, there are very tangible ways to begin. Here are four ways to begin listening as you endeavor to write poetry.