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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:
15 Poems You Can Write Now
You can start these 15 poems right now. Besides being challenging and fun to work on, they can lead to some strong poems. For best results, paste the activity into your word processor, or print out a hard copy. Then write quickly and freely, trusting your imagination, hunches, gut feelings. When you finish, read the poem aloud a few times in private. When you're ready, share the poem with a partner or in a small group. Try working on them in your blog, where you can choose to keep them private or share them.
Read more ...A Poetry Writing Process
Everyone has a personal and unique way of writing. And even with the same poet, different poems follow different paths from inspiration to publication. Even so, it's possible to envision a general process that can help us see where we are at and where we are headed as we work on our poems.
The ideas in this section are intended to help you keep moving ahead with your writing.
Figures of Speech
Figurative language works by implication and often by indirection, which may account, in part, for the impression that poetry is hard to understand and needs to be interpreted, unlike a news article, where the language is literal and straightforward, the meaning self-evident.
Read more ...
