How to Write a Slant Poem
A slant poem is one that uses "slant" or "approximate" rhymes, either internally -- within the line of the poem -- or at the line's end.
Consider this example:
"I love her and I'll make her mine // but I can't make her poem rhyme."
"Mine" and "rhyme" are approximate or slant rhymes. They do not rhyme, but they're close to rhyming.
A slant poem is one that uses "slant" or "approximate" rhymes. For example, "Mine" and "Rhyme" are slant rhymes.
1. Create Traditional Rhymes
Writing a slant poem takes several steps for newcomers to poetry-writing, and even well-established poets need these word exercises from time to time. The first step is to create as many full rhymes as one can think of, written only as single words together: "flat/mat," "God/odd," "boat/float" and so on; would-be writers should be able to create at least a dozen or so of these.
Create a dozen or so single word rhymes
flat / mat
God / odd
boat / float
single / tingle
ball / tall
owl / towel
one / won
four / roar
right / height
hot / not
hook / look
blew / blue
2. Create Simple Poems
The second step is to create simple poems, either in single internally-rhymed lines or couplets, using the created pairings: "I feel that God/Must be quite odd."
There should be a poem created for each pairing. This allows amateur poets to become comfortable with full rhyming and gives experts an excellent "free-writing" experience.
3. Create Slants
The third step is to substitute an approximate rhyme for a full rhyme, using the already-completed pairings. This can be done either with consonant repetition -- repeating end letters of words -- or alliteration -- repeating first letters:
"God/bad"
"flat/flute"
"boat/caught."
4. Finally, rework as couplets or entire poems
Finally, the poet takes these new creations and reworks them as couplets or even entire poems, combining them with true rhymes for the best effect:
If God is God
then God is odd;
if God is God
then God is bad.
Take Him even
take Him Odd;
If I'm not God
then I'm not bad.
These are the "how" steps to writing slant poetry; the poet should also consider the "why" of slanting.
Who Uses Slants?
The best source to answer "why" is the most famous poet to consistently use slant poetry, Emily Dickinson, whose poetry was rejected outright upon its initial publication precisely because her rhymes were not exact.
In fact, numerous editors sought to "correct" Dickinson by rewriting her work to manufacture true rhymes. These corrupted versions are gone, and the poet's original poetic forms are available everywhere.
Dickinson used slants for several reasons: she wanted to startle the reader's sensibilities, she wanted to encourage one to see unlike things in comparison and on occasion she simply seems to have felt like it.
Most frequently, however, her slants aim at personifying an abstraction with a concrete image, as in the work she simply called "Poem 1260," aka "Because that you are going," where she rhymes "he besides concedes," a concrete action, with "confiscated Gods." The line in context presents God as agreeing to the human worship of other things, an unreality rendered brilliantly real.
Poem 1260 by Emily Dickinson
Because that you are going
And never coming back
And I, however absolute
May overlook your Track -
Because that Death is final,
However first it be
This instant be suspended
Above Mortality -
Significance that each has lived
The other to detect
Discovery not God himself
Could now annihilate
Eternity, Presumption
The instant I perceive
That you, who were Existence
Yourself forgot to live -
The "Life that is" will then have been
A thing I never knew -
As Paradise fictitious
Until the Realm of you -
The "Life that is to be," to me,
A Residence too plain
Unless in my Redeemer's Face
I recognize your own -
Of Immortality who doubts
He may exchange with me
Curtailed by your obscuring Face
Of everything but He -
Of Heaven and Hen I also yield
The Right to reprehend
To whoso would commute this Face
For his less priceless Friend.
If "God is Love" as he admits
We think that he must be
Because he is a "jealous God"
He tells us certainly
If "All is possible with" him
As he besides concedes
He will refund us finally
Our confiscated Gods-
Writer Bio
Michael Stratford is a National Board-certified and Single Subject Credentialed teacher with a Master of Science in educational rehabilitation (University of Montana, 1995). He has taught English at the 6-12 level for more than 20 years. He has written extensively in literary criticism, student writing syllabi and numerous classroom educational paradigms.