Poet Laureate W.S. Merwin lives in a palm sanctuary on the island of Maui, where he settled after many years of world travel. His poetry is filled with foreboding about the future of the fragile environment. At the same time it is luminous, meticulously crafted, a celebration of what there is to be lost. What inspires Merwin is his lifelong passion for all of nature. But what gets the poems on the paper is sitting, pen in hand, as a daily practice. He shows up at the page so when the muse drops in with a phrase or a line or a thought, he's ready for it. Merwin, talking about his tactic, has said, "It's important to have a ritual. I try to be very bearish about the mornings and do nothing...so I have the morning to stare at paper and think about poems."
Author and poet Honor Moore wrote a lighthearted set of prompts for "O Magazine," designed to get people writing poetry that springs from their lives. One prompt to spark a poem: Write down three questions you'd ask if they were the last questions you could ever ask; make one of those questions the first line of a poem. Another prompt: Write an early childhood memory, using language a child would use; transform the memory however you like in 20 to 30 lines of 10 syllables each. Even though you may veer off into something else entirely as you keep writing, prompts are the engine cranks to get you started.
Try working in a poetic form as a way to give structure to your writing and to create a laser focus on the meaning of the words. Choose a simple form at first, like haiku or tanka. When you've nailed it, try something more involved, like a villanelle or even free verse. The tanka is an excellent form to experiment with. Tankas are Japanese poems that follow a strict syllabic count meant to capture strong emotions, such as the beauty of nature or the sorrow of love. The form dates back 1500 years and the discipline of writing in 31 syllables, arranged in five lines, is a spark to set the language of inspiration free.
Go sit somewhere amazing. Head for a deserted beach, a redwood forest, an empty cathedral, the Rothko Chapel in Houston, a botanical garden, your own garden, a zoo. Sit, with your pen in hand and your notebook ready, and wait. Poets practice alert waiting. If you are attentive to your surroundings, if you notice the movement of shadows over the ground or the sound of the pads of the tiger's feet hitting the ground as it paces, you may catch the edge of a poem. If you listen, you will begin to hear a note, a phrase, and then, with any luck, the whole outpouring of music that is your poem, lucid, clear and brimming with tigers, will present itself to you.