Love Poetry

Love poetry is a theme, not a form: it can arrive as a sonnet, a lyric, an ode, a villanelle or a page of free verse, and its subject is desire, devotion, friendship, marriage, absence or loss. Because it is the oldest subject in the language, it is also the most worn, and the whole craft of a love poem lies in refusing the received phrases. The traditions are worth knowing so they can be used or refused. The medieval and Elizabethan poets praised a beloved in parts, a device called the blazon, and later poets answered it by refusing to divide a person up. The love poem has also always been written in the negative: the poem of absence, of the unsent letter, of the marriage that has gone quiet. Distinguishing characteristics - Direct address: the poem speaks to someone, named or not. - Praise, or the refusal of praise. - A conceit: one metaphor carried through the whole poem. - A turn, in which the feeling changes direction, as the sonnet's volta does. - Distance and time: what is missed, what is too late, what is still coming. A brief original example, written for this platform If I compare you to the light that leans across the table at the day's decline, you would be more than light: you are the room the light has come into, the patient wood, the cup I turn, the chair that holds you late, the ordinary proof that days are good. Compare you then to nothing. Let it be enough to say: this table, you, and me. How the example works The poem begins with a comparison and then distrusts it, which is the conceit doing its work: the beloved is not like the light, the beloved is the place the light enters. The turn is at 'Compare you then to nothing', and the last line settles on plain nouns instead of an image. Nothing in it could be said about anyone else. Exercise to try Write twelve lines of love poetry that use one comparison and then abandon it. Include at least four concrete things that belong to a particular room, and do not use the words 'heart', 'soul', 'forever' or 'stars'. Revising it Strike out every phrase you have read before. Check that the praise could only be true of this person: if it would fit anyone, it describes no one. Keep the poem short, because love poetry rarely survives length. Read it aloud for tone: if it sounds like a greeting card, the images have become decoration and need to be replaced with facts.