Poetry - Give me a hand?

I'm currently doing poetry at school, however, I need a hand getting some linguistic techniques into my work, among other things:

• Lexical Choices
• Enjambment
• Clever alliteration
• A balance between pragmatic and semantic purpose
• Structure
• Content

So yeah, first was lexical choices. Basically, I need a way of expanding my vocabulary, without sounding pretentious or poor communication of messages.

I'd also like a few examples of working enjambment into my pieces, hopefully with a bit of alliteration.

I want to keep my pieces subtle, without being overly vague - the piece is to be based around the topic "details" after all!

Also, a couple of questions: should I follow a rigid structure, like a haiku, or a limerick. Secondly, what content can one put into a poem - I know the basics, love, loss, war and so forth, but I'd like something slightly more personal, and hopefully, original.

 

A poem can be about anything, sure, some forms of poems like Shakespearian sonnets are 14 lines and talk about love.

But there's no boundary to what can and can't be the subject of a poem.

Structure is up to you, if you have a lot of emotion and feeling for a subject, than do a longer poem, if not, then just do a 2 line rhyming couplet. If you need "details," than probably a longer structure.

Read other poetry to get a sense of the flow of poems and the words used. What kind of time frame of a poem are you trying to resemble? Present day? Renaissance Period, Shakespeare etc?

 

I'm hoping for a sort of Elizabethan feel.

 

Not true, John Donne wrote many great sonnets and a lot of them were about religion. A sonnet can be anything you want, and you don't have to stick to the Elizabethan sonnet. There are also Spanish sonnets that alter the structure of rhyme scheme.

I have always been a fan of the diamante structure and the Senryu and Haibun structures. Your best bet though is probably a free-verse.

Here is an example of something I wrote for a poetry forum a while back, it might help get you find something you like:

I have found a distaste in this world
and I long for it not.
Things are dark and bleak -
Growing darker by the hour.
clouds hang oppressively low
and snow falls softly, coating the ground.
Trudge and be not proud
For they watch your steps.

A preface for destruction
and solemn lives are taken on snowy nights.
Lonely people inhabit quiet streets
while no child-hood lullabies are heard.
In this place there is no longer day
but light trickles in through the clouds -
illuminating those who would not hide.
Your words are watched.

Eyes peer from door ways and window seals
and beggars die bloated.
Malice of the gluttons
proud and noble, but grotesque beasts.
Doors and glass barred in solace
and rosy cheeks pressed to panes.
Tiny hands scrape snow laden cans,
eat as they watch.

Time stands still for those,
tiny hands and tiny cheeks, rosy faces.
Bloated bodies litter streets,
feeding tiny hands and tiny feet.
Scraps and flesh fly in innocence;
life continues.
Rosy cheeks, tiny faces, black eyes,
Watch as they eat the dead.​

 

That's a great poem, and that structure is just the kind I was looking for, thanks a lot. Now, just to find what to put into it :S