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This poem will be short, of course, maybe a quick observation, a moment preserved, as in this no-sentence poem by Ezra Pound:
In a Station of the Metro
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
Or maybe an apostrophe like H. D.'s "The Pool":
The Pool
Are you alive?
I touch you.
You quiver like a sea-fish.
I cover you with my net.
What are you—banded one?
It might as well be spring . . .
or maybe it is, so many love poems keep appearing in the blogs. Love poems are some of the hardest poems to write, or so claimed W. H. Auden. Here are a few classics that have inspired poets and lovers over the years:
- The Passionate Shepherd to His Love by Christopher Marlowe
- The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd by Sir Walter Ralegh
- somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond by e. e. cummings
- To the March Wind by Chuck Guilford
- Let me not to the marriage of true minds by William Shakespeare
- The Definition of Love by Andrew Marvell
- What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why by Edna St. Vincent Millay
- The Buried Life by Matthew Arnold
- A Birthday by Christina Rossetti
- How Do I Love Thee? by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
- Wild Nights — Wild Nights! by Emily Dickinson
- When You Are Old by W. B. Yeats
- Credo by Matthew Roher
A few suggestions: use concrete, specific images to show your feelings; avoid sing-song "roses are red" type rhyming; try to say something fresh and new that gives readers a new insight — or even a laugh.
And check out the following topics:
Poem #2: Shift Perspectives
Write a companion poem to the apostrophe you wrote for Poem 1, this time writing from the perspective of whomever or whatever you addressed the first time.
You may choose not to reveal the speaker's identity. That is, if you wrote #1 to an eagle, you would now write from an eagle's point of view, but might not let on that an eagle is the poem's speaker.
Read more ...Share Poems
-- the no praise/no blame method
As a reader, you may find it hard to speak frankly in the poet's presence about words, images, and ideas charged with personal expression. Yet in doing so, you help the writer see how the poem affects another person, and how it might evolve in a future draft.
Read more ...Poetry Tips & Techniques
As you read, write, and discuss poetry, you'll begin to think about language and communication in new ways. In a poem, for instance, a decision on word choice may depend as much on sound as on meaning. A sharp visual image may resonate with political or spiritual implications. And memorable phrases can be woven into haunting incantations.
The ideas and suggestions in this section introduce some key concepts for readers and writers of poetry.