Harry Rutherford
03-08-2002, 04:27 PM
Reading through the poems posted to Love, it's noticeable that the same problems are coming up over and over again. This thread is intended to address those problems.
The first is clichés. Avoiding clichés is always difficult for beginners, and particularly when writing love poetry, because it's such well-worn ground. I won't go into it here, but read the threads on the subject in Blurbs of Wisdom. Once you know what a cliché is, the more poems you write, and the more time you invest in each one, the easier it is to identify and avoid them.
More specific to Love is the number of abstractions and generalities.
An abstraction is something that you can't see, hear, smell or touch, like 'love', 'pain' 'beauty' 'hate' 'doubt' or 'fear' (there are threads in Blurbs explaining why abstractions are unhelpful to poetry).
Obviously all emotions are abstractions in this sense. That means that poems specifically about emotions often end up full of abstractions. Also, if the poem concentrates purely on the emotional response of the poet, often the result is a poem with nothing of the lover in it at all. A loved one is reduced to nothing but a gush of happiness on the part of the poet; all the things that make them special – the way their skin smells, their lilting accent, the way they take their tea, the curve of their buttocks in their scruffy jeans, their moodiness in the morning – has all vanished. This is what I mean by 'generalities'. All the interesting specifics are gone.
When you read a poem which simply tells you about the poet's emotions, you may recognise those emotions; that's why so many of the comments offered in this forum are things like 'I know how you feel.' But the ideally, the poem should make you feel the emotions for yourself.
So how do you write about love without writing about love?
I can think of two main things you can try. The first, as I've implied, is to inject some reality into the poem. How does she smell? how does she walk? where did you meet her?
For example, this is from Ted Hughes's poem St Botolph's, describing his first meeting with Sylvia Plath (who he later married).
Falcon Yard:
Girl-friend like a loaded crossbow. The sound-waves
Jammed and torn by Joe Lyde's Jazz. The hall
Like the tilting deck of the Titanic:
A silent film, with that blare over it. Suddenly –
Lucas engineered it – suddenly you.
First sight. First snapshot isolated
Unalterable, stilled in the camera's glare.
Taller
Than ever you were again. Swaying so slender
It seemed your long, perfect, American legs
Simply went on up. That flaring hand,
Those long, balletic, monkey-elegant-fingers.
And the face – a tight ball of joy.
I see you there, clearer, more real
Than in any of the years in its shadow –
As if I saw you that once, then never again.
It doesn't necessarily need to be details about her – just invoking a real context for your poem will immediately make it more vivid. This is Politics by W. B. Yeats –
How can I, that girl standing there,
My attention fix
On Roman or on Russian
Or on Spanish politics?
Yet here's a travelled man that knows
What he talks about,
And there's a politician
That has both read and thought,
And maybe what they say is true
Of war and war's alarms,
But O that I were young again
And held her in my arms.
The other approach that poets have used over the centuries is metaphor. Rather than simply telling us you're in love, find some comparison – what's the experience like? For example, from Symptoms of Love by Robert Graves –
Love is universal migraine,
A bright stain on the vision
Blotting out reason.
Surely that's better than just saying 'love is so intense, it makes it hard to think clearly'?
This poem, Ah, Love, by Linda Pastan, uses the metaphor of a knifethrower to communicate the vulnerability of the lover -
Ah, Love
you expert
knifethrower, outlining my body
with your gleaming blades
as I stand trembling here
against the bedroom wall.
I was distracted
for months by the color
of your flowers,
by all your flowery
words, for where you come from
it is always tropical.
Now I am ready for you
to do your worst. Look,
I am opening my blouse--here
is my uncovered heart.
Just aim for it.
The two aren't mutually exclusive, of course – one final example, Bright Star by John Keats, combines the metaphor of the star with an description of the experience of lying in bed with someone (btw, 'eremite' is a poeticism for 'hermit') -
Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art--
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors--
No--yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillowed upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever--or else swoon to death.
Some other love poems you might enjoy –
Auden
Lullaby (http://plagiarist.com/poetry/?wid=24)
Betjemen
The Subaltern's Love Song (http://www.globalideasbank.org/Poems/PoemAug28.html)
Browning
Meeting at Night (http://www.bartleby.com/101/724.html)
Burns
A Red, Red, Rose (http://plagiarist.com/poetry/?wid=5918)
Byron
She Walks in Beauty (http://plagiarist.com/poetry/?wid=2207)
Donne
A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning (http://plagiarist.com/poetry/?wid=2309)
The Apparition (http://plagiarist.com/poetry/?wid=7677)
Elegy XIX: To His Mistress Going to Bed (http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/elegy20.htm)
The Flea (http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/flea.htm)
The Sun Rising (http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/sunrising.htm)
Dryden
Ode (http://plagiarist.com/poetry/?wid=7182)
Graves
She Tells her Love (http://www.poetropical.co.uk/25.html)
Herrick
Delight in Disorder (http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/herrick/disorder.htm)
To Virgins, to Make Much of Time (http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/herrick/tovirgins.htm)
Marvell
The Mower to the Glo-Worms (http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/marvell/gloworms.htm)
To His Coy Mistress (http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/marvell/coy.htm)
The Unfortunate Lover (http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/marvell/unfortun.htm)
Roethke
I Knew a Woman (http://plagiarist.com/poetry/?wid=2489)
Shakespeare
Sonnet 116 (http://plagiarist.com/poetry/?wid=870)
Sonnet 18 (http://plagiarist.com/poetry/?wid=915)
Sonnet 30 (http://plagiarist.com/poetry/?wid=929)
Sidney
With how Sad Steps… (http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/stella31.htm)
Tennyson
The Garden (http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/tennyson/she_is_coming_my_own_my.html)
Wyatt
They Flee from Me that Sometime did Me Seek (http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/theyflee.htm)
Yeats
He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven (http://plagiarist.com/poetry/?wid=1243)
Among Schoolchildren (http://plagiarist.com/poetry/?wid=1753)
The first is clichés. Avoiding clichés is always difficult for beginners, and particularly when writing love poetry, because it's such well-worn ground. I won't go into it here, but read the threads on the subject in Blurbs of Wisdom. Once you know what a cliché is, the more poems you write, and the more time you invest in each one, the easier it is to identify and avoid them.
More specific to Love is the number of abstractions and generalities.
An abstraction is something that you can't see, hear, smell or touch, like 'love', 'pain' 'beauty' 'hate' 'doubt' or 'fear' (there are threads in Blurbs explaining why abstractions are unhelpful to poetry).
Obviously all emotions are abstractions in this sense. That means that poems specifically about emotions often end up full of abstractions. Also, if the poem concentrates purely on the emotional response of the poet, often the result is a poem with nothing of the lover in it at all. A loved one is reduced to nothing but a gush of happiness on the part of the poet; all the things that make them special – the way their skin smells, their lilting accent, the way they take their tea, the curve of their buttocks in their scruffy jeans, their moodiness in the morning – has all vanished. This is what I mean by 'generalities'. All the interesting specifics are gone.
When you read a poem which simply tells you about the poet's emotions, you may recognise those emotions; that's why so many of the comments offered in this forum are things like 'I know how you feel.' But the ideally, the poem should make you feel the emotions for yourself.
So how do you write about love without writing about love?
I can think of two main things you can try. The first, as I've implied, is to inject some reality into the poem. How does she smell? how does she walk? where did you meet her?
For example, this is from Ted Hughes's poem St Botolph's, describing his first meeting with Sylvia Plath (who he later married).
Falcon Yard:
Girl-friend like a loaded crossbow. The sound-waves
Jammed and torn by Joe Lyde's Jazz. The hall
Like the tilting deck of the Titanic:
A silent film, with that blare over it. Suddenly –
Lucas engineered it – suddenly you.
First sight. First snapshot isolated
Unalterable, stilled in the camera's glare.
Taller
Than ever you were again. Swaying so slender
It seemed your long, perfect, American legs
Simply went on up. That flaring hand,
Those long, balletic, monkey-elegant-fingers.
And the face – a tight ball of joy.
I see you there, clearer, more real
Than in any of the years in its shadow –
As if I saw you that once, then never again.
It doesn't necessarily need to be details about her – just invoking a real context for your poem will immediately make it more vivid. This is Politics by W. B. Yeats –
How can I, that girl standing there,
My attention fix
On Roman or on Russian
Or on Spanish politics?
Yet here's a travelled man that knows
What he talks about,
And there's a politician
That has both read and thought,
And maybe what they say is true
Of war and war's alarms,
But O that I were young again
And held her in my arms.
The other approach that poets have used over the centuries is metaphor. Rather than simply telling us you're in love, find some comparison – what's the experience like? For example, from Symptoms of Love by Robert Graves –
Love is universal migraine,
A bright stain on the vision
Blotting out reason.
Surely that's better than just saying 'love is so intense, it makes it hard to think clearly'?
This poem, Ah, Love, by Linda Pastan, uses the metaphor of a knifethrower to communicate the vulnerability of the lover -
Ah, Love
you expert
knifethrower, outlining my body
with your gleaming blades
as I stand trembling here
against the bedroom wall.
I was distracted
for months by the color
of your flowers,
by all your flowery
words, for where you come from
it is always tropical.
Now I am ready for you
to do your worst. Look,
I am opening my blouse--here
is my uncovered heart.
Just aim for it.
The two aren't mutually exclusive, of course – one final example, Bright Star by John Keats, combines the metaphor of the star with an description of the experience of lying in bed with someone (btw, 'eremite' is a poeticism for 'hermit') -
Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art--
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors--
No--yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillowed upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever--or else swoon to death.
Some other love poems you might enjoy –
Auden
Lullaby (http://plagiarist.com/poetry/?wid=24)
Betjemen
The Subaltern's Love Song (http://www.globalideasbank.org/Poems/PoemAug28.html)
Browning
Meeting at Night (http://www.bartleby.com/101/724.html)
Burns
A Red, Red, Rose (http://plagiarist.com/poetry/?wid=5918)
Byron
She Walks in Beauty (http://plagiarist.com/poetry/?wid=2207)
Donne
A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning (http://plagiarist.com/poetry/?wid=2309)
The Apparition (http://plagiarist.com/poetry/?wid=7677)
Elegy XIX: To His Mistress Going to Bed (http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/elegy20.htm)
The Flea (http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/flea.htm)
The Sun Rising (http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/sunrising.htm)
Dryden
Ode (http://plagiarist.com/poetry/?wid=7182)
Graves
She Tells her Love (http://www.poetropical.co.uk/25.html)
Herrick
Delight in Disorder (http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/herrick/disorder.htm)
To Virgins, to Make Much of Time (http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/herrick/tovirgins.htm)
Marvell
The Mower to the Glo-Worms (http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/marvell/gloworms.htm)
To His Coy Mistress (http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/marvell/coy.htm)
The Unfortunate Lover (http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/marvell/unfortun.htm)
Roethke
I Knew a Woman (http://plagiarist.com/poetry/?wid=2489)
Shakespeare
Sonnet 116 (http://plagiarist.com/poetry/?wid=870)
Sonnet 18 (http://plagiarist.com/poetry/?wid=915)
Sonnet 30 (http://plagiarist.com/poetry/?wid=929)
Sidney
With how Sad Steps… (http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/stella31.htm)
Tennyson
The Garden (http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/tennyson/she_is_coming_my_own_my.html)
Wyatt
They Flee from Me that Sometime did Me Seek (http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/theyflee.htm)
Yeats
He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven (http://plagiarist.com/poetry/?wid=1243)
Among Schoolchildren (http://plagiarist.com/poetry/?wid=1753)