KIM ADDONIZIO: One technique that I find myself going back to a lot is anaphora, which is just repeating a word or phrase at the beginning of a line. And it's a very simple technique, but it lets you go a lot of different places. And it kind of triggers new things.
So if you just start with something simple like "I want" or "you never" or "because," it triggers something, and you begin to have ideas. And it lets you go a lot of different places, so you're not necessarily just telling a story, but you're also kind of using it to get your imagination going in a lot of different directions. And that's one I find that often will let me find my way into saying something.
And it makes it very musical, too, because you have this repetition. And we love repetition. And it makes it like sort of a song or an incantation to repeat a word or repeat a phrase. And so it's a good little trick you can use in a way to get yourself writing. And it does interesting things when you read it back, too.