The Art of Imitation

One of the best ways of writing is by imitation. To some people, that thought seems contradictory. I’ve met people who claimed to be writers but who didn’t read. They didn’t want their style to be influenced by another author. The thought is pretty ridiculous. When I told my professor about this, he laughed and said, “It’s impossible to imitate someone else’s writing. Everyone has their own unique voice. You can write like Ernest Hemingway, but you still won’t sound like him.”

Every literature and writing teacher will admit, if not preach, that reading a lot will improve one’s writing. The idea of not wanting another author’s writing to influence my own has never been a concern of mine. When I first heard the idea, I was bewildered, absolutely confused. Writing and reading have been tied together in my life since I was first asked to write a poem in middle school. The two are entwined for me and I could understand how a person would love to read but not to write, but not vice versa. I still feel this way. I have read too much to worry about my writing sounding too much like one author or another. I am full of many.

The art of imitation in writing comes from the experiments and the knowledge that comes from the experience. In the act of imitation, writers discover themselves in ways they wouldn’t in solitude. Formats, language, ideas, and many more aspects of someone’s writing are discovered. Writing a mirror version of someone else's piece gives a writer a real sense of their own unique voice, what they can or cannot do well, and what it is that they have to say.

When I took my college poetry class, one of our pieces was meant to imitate one of the poems we had discussed. I imitated Samuel Daniel’s “Sonnet 49,” a piece that begs the personification of Sleep to let the narrator rest without his tormenting dreams of unrequited love. My piece approaches the subject of mental illness by imitating “Sonnet 49.” Instead of Sleep, my narrator speaks of Insomnia as a toxic love rather than an unrequited one.

When I wrote this poem, I already imitated enough poets to realize that I thrive within sonnets. However, this was the first poem I had written that delved into my feelings about my own mental illnesses. Not long after writing this, I wrote a few more, and those are the ones that tend to be my own favorites. I have already shared my first poem in my crown sonnet series, which was written about Anxiety shortly after I wrote “Oh Insomnia.”

It is my challenge to any aspiring writer to try and imitate many of their favorite authors and poets. I have fun imitating poetry, but any style of writing can be improved with this kind of practice. Below I show both “Sonnet 49” and “Oh Insomnia.”

Sonnets to Delia - Sonnet 49

by Samuel Daniel

"Care-charmer Sleepe, sonne of the sable Night,

Brother to death, in silent darknes borne;

Relieve my languish, and restore the light,

With darke forgetting of my care's returne:

And let the day be time enough to mourne

The shipwrack of my ill-adventred youth:

Let waking eyes suffice to waile their scorne,

Without the torment of the night's untruth.

Cease dreames, th'imag'ry of our day desires,

To modell forth the passions of the morrow:

Never let rysing Sunne approve you lyers,

To adde more griefe to agravate my sorrow.

Still let me sleepe, imbracing clowdes in vaine,

And never wake to feele the daye's disdayne."

Oh Insomnia by L. D. Humphrey

"Oh Insomnia, haunter of the stars,

Sister, dearest, of my faithful mistress

Anxiety, the key keeper of my bars.

She laughs at my dismantle, and witness.

Sharp teeth chatter, rattle my night away,

My tongue curses, rants, trapp’d by the silence.

Her caress reach, embracing the decay,

I howl and choke on words of defiance.

We tussle among my strangling sheets

We weave and fight against the universe

In each dreamless shadow it all repeats

And time after time I relive this curse.

I suppose company, any at all,

Are still arms that hold me in the nightfall."