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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 #13: Start With an Epigraph
An epigraph is a short quotation placed at the start of a poem to help set the tone and focus your efforts. Almost anything can work if you find it inspiring: a quote from another poet, a few sentences from a news article, a memorable phrase spoken by a friend, a saying from Poor Richard's Almanack.
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 ...Rhythm and Meter
These are similar but not identical concepts. Rhythm refers to the overall tempo, or pace, at which the poem unfolds, while meter refers to the measured beat established by patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables. Poets who write free verse, generally de-emphasize or ignore meter and focus instead on refining and tuning their natural speech rhythms to suit the poem's tone and content. Or as Ezra Pound put it, they "compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in the sequence of the metronome."
Read more ...