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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
- 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 #9: Collect Fabulous Realities
Poets develop a sharp eye to observe, a sharp ear to hear--the sights and sounds of everyday reality, the texture of the quotidian, to find "infinity in a grain of sand, eternity in an hour" (William Blake). That is, they recognize that the ordinary dramas of everyday reality are not ordinary at all, but unique, unrepeatable moments charged with implication and significance, which can be captured and revealed in language.
Read more ...Publish Poems
Publication can take many forms. The refrigerator door is a good place to start. Or you could print out a copy and tape it to the wall above your desk, where you and your visitors can read it. Better yet, start a Blog on this site and publish here.
Read more ...A Sense of Form
A poem's form is partly visual: its look on the page. George Herbert's "Easter Wings" is an example of striking visual form, as is e. e. cummings' "r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r." But visual form also works in less obvious ways. The lean, spare look of most Emily Dickinson poems complements her terse style, while the long, sweeping lines of Walt Whitman accentuate his bold, expansive message.
Read more ...