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Begin with content. What do you want to say? Write this down. And then write some more and some more. Write down everything you might want to say. And maybe write some things you just thought up also. And maybe include some metaphors or similes that are a little weird. Maybe write in more than one language if you tend to speak or think in more than one language.

Then, using a book about poetic forms, I recommend the Teachers and Writers Handbook of Poetic Forms because it is a little less stuffy, look at various poetic forms and make a list of poems that might make sense for your content. Say you want to write a poem about how much you love someone, look at the sonnet and the ghazal. Or say you want to write a poem about your city and how great it is, look at the list poem.

Pick one of these forms for your poem. Then study your form some more. If you had picked the sonnet, say, you would take some notes on its rhyme and meter scheme and the turn. And then you would take some more notes about how it has traditionally been a poem where a lover talks about an elusive beloved. You might write down something about how Shakespeare talks back to Petrarch. And you might also write about how in the Harlem Renaissance a lot of writers wrote political sonnets. And other things about the sonnet also. Maybe what you like about it. And maybe also what annoys you about it.

Then practice the form a little. Write some imitations of the form following all the rules. And maybe some imitations where you only follow some of the rules. And think about which rules are the rules that will help you get your point across in this poem you want to write. And which ones not.

Now, forget about all this note taking that you've done and go back to the writing you did originally and write your poem out of that writing.

Juliana Spahr is a poet, editor, publisher, and author of many books, most recently, This Connection of Everyone with Lungs (UC Press), and things of each possible relation hashing against one another (Palm Press). She teaches at Mills College in Oakland and lives in Berkeley.