Poet Nikki Giovanni says: "Writing a good love poem is like being a good lover. You have to touch, taste, take your time to tell that this is real. The Supremes say You Can't Hurry Love and you can't fake it, either."
Love
She tries it on, like a dress.
She decides it doesn’t fit
and starts to take it off.
Her skin comes, too.
by Lola Haskins
This poem performs the difficult but amazing task of describing an abstract concept in very concrete, tactile terms. We know exactly what kind of love this is: something that started casually, something that she thought would be reversible, or temporary; something that literally gets under her skin, becomes part of her. To remove it is akin to skinning oneself. Alive.
All in four lines!
Or check out how Billy Collins plays with clichés of love, then subverts them, twirls them around, and manages to sound romantic all at the same time:
Litany
You are the bread and the knife,
The crystal goblet and the wine...
-Jacques Crickillon
You are the bread and the knife,
the crystal goblet and the wine.
You are the dew on the morning grass
and the burning wheel of the sun.
You are the white apron of the baker,
and the marsh birds suddenly in flight.
However, you are not the wind in the orchard,
the plums on the counter,
or the house of cards.
And you are certainly not the pine-scented air.
There is just no way that you are the pine-scented air.
It is possible that you are the fish under the bridge,
maybe even the pigeon on the general's head,
but you are not even close
to being the field of cornflowers at dusk.
And a quick look in the mirror will show
that you are neither the boots in the corner
nor the boat asleep in its boathouse.
It might interest you to know,
speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world,
that I am the sound of rain on the roof.
I also happen to be the shooting star,
the evening paper blowing down an alley
and the basket of chestnuts on the kitchen table.
I am also the moon in the trees
and the blind woman's tea cup.
But don't worry, I'm not the bread and the knife.
You are still the bread and the knife.
You will always be the bread and the knife,
not to mention the crystal goblet and--somehow--the wine.
-Billy Collins
Your assignment this week is to write a love poem using the following rules:
1. do not mention the word love
2. stay entirely in the concrete
3. surprise us - reject clichés
4. You may use any form you like (you can try a new form, like the Villanelle, or stick with one you've already tried; you can also use free verse).
The problem with love poems, of course, is that so many have been written that we have a whole array of predictable images, expectations, and symbols that accompany our thoughts about love poems. These rules are designed to kick you out of those ruts, force you to be original, and encourage your personal originality.
FREEWRITES:
Love
She tries it on, like a dress.
She decides it doesn’t fit
and starts to take it off.
Her skin comes, too.
by Lola Haskins
This poem performs the difficult but amazing task of describing an abstract concept in very concrete, tactile terms. We know exactly what kind of love this is: something that started casually, something that she thought would be reversible, or temporary; something that literally gets under her skin, becomes part of her. To remove it is akin to skinning oneself. Alive.
All in four lines!
Or check out how Billy Collins plays with clichés of love, then subverts them, twirls them around, and manages to sound romantic all at the same time:
Litany
You are the bread and the knife,
The crystal goblet and the wine...
-Jacques Crickillon
You are the bread and the knife,
the crystal goblet and the wine.
You are the dew on the morning grass
and the burning wheel of the sun.
You are the white apron of the baker,
and the marsh birds suddenly in flight.
However, you are not the wind in the orchard,
the plums on the counter,
or the house of cards.
And you are certainly not the pine-scented air.
There is just no way that you are the pine-scented air.
It is possible that you are the fish under the bridge,
maybe even the pigeon on the general's head,
but you are not even close
to being the field of cornflowers at dusk.
And a quick look in the mirror will show
that you are neither the boots in the corner
nor the boat asleep in its boathouse.
It might interest you to know,
speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world,
that I am the sound of rain on the roof.
I also happen to be the shooting star,
the evening paper blowing down an alley
and the basket of chestnuts on the kitchen table.
I am also the moon in the trees
and the blind woman's tea cup.
But don't worry, I'm not the bread and the knife.
You are still the bread and the knife.
You will always be the bread and the knife,
not to mention the crystal goblet and--somehow--the wine.
-Billy Collins
Your assignment this week is to write a love poem using the following rules:
1. do not mention the word love
2. stay entirely in the concrete
3. surprise us - reject clichés
4. You may use any form you like (you can try a new form, like the Villanelle, or stick with one you've already tried; you can also use free verse).
The problem with love poems, of course, is that so many have been written that we have a whole array of predictable images, expectations, and symbols that accompany our thoughts about love poems. These rules are designed to kick you out of those ruts, force you to be original, and encourage your personal originality.
FREEWRITES:
Write down a list of random nouns: rock, raspberry, window, chicken, footprint. In your freewrite, start with [pick one]: 'Love is ____.' Perhaps start with ‘rock.’ Remember how many different kinds of rocks there are, how many origins, colors, sizes, weight. Try to recall all the names you know for types of rock: granite, marble, bedrock, chert, boulder, pebble, sandstone, pumice … remember that some rocks are alive with colonies of moss or lice or even animals. Remember that rocks have a smell, might make noises if hit or thrown, could taste of minerals, iron, grit, and have texture variations from ultrasmooth to pitted and cracked. Go for 5 minutes. What is love? – but don't use the word love at all.
The second prompt was similar; pick one of your nouns, perhaps one that doesn’t appeal to you particularly, or one that sounds a bit bizarre. Write about that object as if you were in love with it. What would it require from you to love a rock? What would your relationship with that rock be like? What kind of person would you be, or become? How would you demonstrate your love? How would the rock love you back, or would it? Again: stay concrete, sensory, tactile, as physically present as possible.
Here are two examples taken from freewrites I've done in the past (slightly touched up, still not finished poems yet):
The second prompt was similar; pick one of your nouns, perhaps one that doesn’t appeal to you particularly, or one that sounds a bit bizarre. Write about that object as if you were in love with it. What would it require from you to love a rock? What would your relationship with that rock be like? What kind of person would you be, or become? How would you demonstrate your love? How would the rock love you back, or would it? Again: stay concrete, sensory, tactile, as physically present as possible.
Here are two examples taken from freewrites I've done in the past (slightly touched up, still not finished poems yet):
Love is a Window
One of those old ones from colonial times, with wavery glass that distorts everything you view through it. When you try to open this window, to lift the sash, it sticks, goes up in little shudders and bursts of wood and flaky old paint. The weights inside the side panels have long since broken, cords frayed or mouse-chewed. So you have to find a stick, or a book, or an old shoe, to hold the window open. Then of course, the window is too old to have a built-in screen, so you shove in, or finesse in, one of those expandable wooden-frame screens, hope no bugs get past, but know they will. Be realistic: you are in for a sweltering, buggy, breezeless night with this window. It won't be pretty. The old wood might shove a splinter up your fingernail when you try to push it too far. The glass might crack if you yank too hard. Don't even think about trying to lock it shut in winter. Stubborn? Yes. Low maintenance? Only if you don’t want fresh air or security. But remember this: that window has lots of character. That cloudy eye has seen at least a century’s worth of history: rain, humidity, thunder and lightning that would break your heart. They don’t make windows like that anymore. Windows that refuse to shut out the world.
Loving a Footprint
You must love impermanence. It will appear suddenly, then become blurred, distorted, scuffed, gone. Other tracks will cover it up, obscure the fact of beloved shape. Only you will remember if it ever existed: the deep cup of the heel, long ridge of edge, delicate suggestion of an arch, five toes neat as peas. You must imagine all the rest: the muscular calf, sturdy knee, flexible hip. The tender belly, lusty lungs, heart, shoulders, the intelligent eyes. Believe that it's all there, even when all you have is a spare and skinny footprint. Loving a footprint means loving travel. You must have a willingness to go, to move, head out, keep on. Hug the clay, sandy verges, muddy shoulders where you can follow that footprint with the eye, but depend on your heart. Be observant. Make good guesses. Anticipate loss, disappearance at the edge of streams. Loving a footprint forces you to rush things.. Remember those ancient human footprints in lava, hardened over millennia? We can't all be so lucky.
A third way to approach this assignment is to think about hearts. How do poets describe hearts in love, hearts surviving loss of love, hearts trying to bear grief? If hearts could speak for themselves, what would they say? Here are a few examples:
This is My Heart
This is my heart. It is a good heart.
Bones and a membrane of mist and fire
are the woven cover.
When we make love in the flower world
my heart is close enough to sing
to yours in a language that has no use f
or clumsy human words.
My head, is a good head, but it is a hard head
and it whirrs inside with a swarm of worries.
What is the source of this singing, it asks
and if there is a source why can’t I see it
right here, right now
as real as these hands hammering
the world together
with nails and sinew?
This is my soul. It is a good soul.
It tells me, “Come here forgetful one.”
And we sit together with lilt of small winds
who rattle the scrub oak.
We cook a little something to eat, then a sip
of something sweet, for memory.
This is my song. It is a good song.
It walked forever the border of fire and water
Climbed ribs of desire to my lips to sing to you.
Its new wings quiver with
vulnerability.
Come lie next to me, says my heart.
Put your head here.
It is a good thing, says my soul.
- Joy Harjo
Mongrel Heart
by David Baker
Up the dog bounds to the window, baying
like a basset his doleful, tearing sounds
from the belly, as if mourning a dead king,
and now he’s howling like a beagle – yips, brays,
gagging growls – and scratching the sill paintless,
that’s how much he’s missed you, the two of you,
both of you, mother and daughter, my wife
and child. All week he’s curled at my feet,
warming himself and me watching more TV,
or wandered the lonely rooms, my dog shadow,
who like a poodle now hops, amped-up windup
maniac yo-yo with matted curls and snot nose
smearing the panes, having heard another car
like yours taking its grinding turn down
our block, or a school bus, or bird-squawk,
that’s how much he’s missed you, good dog,
companion dog, dog-of-all-types, most excellent dog
I told you once and for all we should never get.
Little Clown, My Heart
- Sandra Cisneros
Little clown, my heart,
Spangled again and lopsided,
Handstands and Peking pirouettes,
Back flips snapping open like
A carpenter's hinged ruler,
Little gimp-footed hurray,
Paper parasol of pleasures,
Fleshy undertongue of sorrows,
Sweet potato plant of my addictions,
Acapulco cliff-diver corazon,
Fine as an obsidian dagger,
Alley-oop and here we go
Into the froth, my life,
Into the flames!
Heart, My Lovely Hobo
- Sandra Cisneros
Bones and a membrane of mist and fire
are the woven cover.
When we make love in the flower world
my heart is close enough to sing
to yours in a language that has no use f
or clumsy human words.
My head, is a good head, but it is a hard head
and it whirrs inside with a swarm of worries.
What is the source of this singing, it asks
and if there is a source why can’t I see it
right here, right now
as real as these hands hammering
the world together
with nails and sinew?
This is my soul. It is a good soul.
It tells me, “Come here forgetful one.”
And we sit together with lilt of small winds
who rattle the scrub oak.
We cook a little something to eat, then a sip
of something sweet, for memory.
This is my song. It is a good song.
It walked forever the border of fire and water
Climbed ribs of desire to my lips to sing to you.
Its new wings quiver with
vulnerability.
Come lie next to me, says my heart.
Put your head here.
It is a good thing, says my soul.
- Joy Harjo
Mongrel Heart
by David Baker
Up the dog bounds to the window, baying
like a basset his doleful, tearing sounds
from the belly, as if mourning a dead king,
and now he’s howling like a beagle – yips, brays,
gagging growls – and scratching the sill paintless,
that’s how much he’s missed you, the two of you,
both of you, mother and daughter, my wife
and child. All week he’s curled at my feet,
warming himself and me watching more TV,
or wandered the lonely rooms, my dog shadow,
who like a poodle now hops, amped-up windup
maniac yo-yo with matted curls and snot nose
smearing the panes, having heard another car
like yours taking its grinding turn down
our block, or a school bus, or bird-squawk,
that’s how much he’s missed you, good dog,
companion dog, dog-of-all-types, most excellent dog
I told you once and for all we should never get.
Little Clown, My Heart
- Sandra Cisneros
Little clown, my heart,
Spangled again and lopsided,
Handstands and Peking pirouettes,
Back flips snapping open like
A carpenter's hinged ruler,
Little gimp-footed hurray,
Paper parasol of pleasures,
Fleshy undertongue of sorrows,
Sweet potato plant of my addictions,
Acapulco cliff-diver corazon,
Fine as an obsidian dagger,
Alley-oop and here we go
Into the froth, my life,
Into the flames!
Heart, My Lovely Hobo
- Sandra Cisneros
Heart, my lovely hobo, you
remember, then, that afternoon in Venice
when all the pigeons rose flooding the piazza
like a vaulted ceiling. That was you
and you alone who grinned.
Fat as an oyster,
pulpy as a plum,
raw, exposed, naïve,
dumb. As if love
could be curbed, and grace
could save you from the daily beatings.
Those blue jewels of flowers in the arbor
that the bees loved. Oh, there’ll be other
flowers, a cat maybe beside the bougainvillea,
a little boat with flags glittering in the harbor
to make you laugh,
to make you spiral once more.
Not this throbbing.
This.
Heart
By Margaret Atwood
Some people sell their blood. You sell your heart.
It was either that or the soul.
The hard part is getting the damn thing out.
A kind of twisting motion, like shucking an oyster,
your spine a wrist,
and then, hup! it's in your mouth.
You turn yourself partially inside out
like a sea anemone coughing a pebble.
There's a broken plop, the racket
of fish guts into a pail,
and there it is, a huge glistening deep-red clot
of the still-alive past, whole on the plate.
It gets passed around. It's slippery. It gets dropped,
but also tasted. Too coarse, says one. Too salty.
Too sour, says another, making a face.
Each one is an instant gourmet,
and you stand listening to all this
in the corner, like a newly hired waiter,
your diffident, skilful hand on the wound hidden
deep in your shirt and chest,
shyly, heartless.
By Margaret Atwood
Some people sell their blood. You sell your heart.
It was either that or the soul.
The hard part is getting the damn thing out.
A kind of twisting motion, like shucking an oyster,
your spine a wrist,
and then, hup! it's in your mouth.
You turn yourself partially inside out
like a sea anemone coughing a pebble.
There's a broken plop, the racket
of fish guts into a pail,
and there it is, a huge glistening deep-red clot
of the still-alive past, whole on the plate.
It gets passed around. It's slippery. It gets dropped,
but also tasted. Too coarse, says one. Too salty.
Too sour, says another, making a face.
Each one is an instant gourmet,
and you stand listening to all this
in the corner, like a newly hired waiter,
your diffident, skilful hand on the wound hidden
deep in your shirt and chest,
shyly, heartless.
Heart to Heart
- by Rita Dove
It's neither red
nor sweet.
It doesn't melt
or turn over,
break or harden,
so it can't feel
pain,
yearning,
regret.
It doesn't have
a tip to spin on,
it isn't even
shapely—
just a thick clutch
of muscle,
lopsided,
mute. Still,
I feel it inside
its cage sounding
a dull tattoo:
I want, I want—
but I can't open it:
there's no key.
I can't wear it
on my sleeve,
or tell you from
the bottom of it
how I feel. Here,
it's all yours, now—
but you'll have
to take me,
too.
The Laughing Heart
- by Charles Bukowski
your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.
The Human Heart
- by Campbell McGrath
We construct it from tin and ambergris and clay,
ochre, graph paper, a funnel
of ghosts, whirlpool
in a downspout full of midsummer rain.
It is, for all its freedom and obstinence,
an artifact of human agency
in its maverick intricacy
its chaos reflected in earthly circumstance,
its appetites mirrored by a hungry world
like the lights of the casino
in the coyote’s eye. Old
as the odor of almonds in the hills around Solano,
filigreed and chancelled with the flavor of blood oranges,
fashioned from moonlight,
yarn, nacre, cordite,
shaped and assembled valve by valve, flange by flange,
and finished with the carnal fire of interstellar dust.
We build the human heart
and lock it in its chest
and hope that what we have made can save us.
Finally, in the following poem ("Broke"), I try to write about the hearts of people I know and love, people who seem to always get a raw deal, people who never seem to love wisely or get a good start on healthy relationships. Of course, I imagine myself as one of those hearts, at least in the moment of conceiving the poem, and create a community of other "broke" hearts to keep myself company. I play off the way "broke" also means "penniless" and "poor" also means living in poverty. If love were money, I wonder, how would we describe being broken-hearted? Is love a kind of currency that some of us will always be perpetually short of? Concrete imagery was the key to exploring those ideas.
Broke
- Deborah Miranda
Poor hearts rattle paper cups on the sidewalk,
earn rent limping in three-inch stilettos,
burn holes in their pockets with unrequited love.
Poor hearts slouch in the unemployment line every month,
have more lust than sense, believe tenderness
is the root of all evil. Poor hearts
support someone else’s illegal habit,
post bail for an unfaithful lover,
squander their savings on get-love-quick schemes in Florida.
They lose their shirts when the bubble bursts,
fall for counterfeit affections, don’t have
no change for the lonely bus home.
Poor hearts love under the table all their lives,
operate on the barter system, pray for fair trade,
believe if you love hard enough …
Poor hearts can’t budget for the long haul,
get lunch at St. Leo’s kitchen, recycle
the same cheap passion till it’s threadbare.
Poor hearts do the loving no one else wants to do,
avoid the dentist till the tooth’s rotted out,
moonlight with coyotes to make ends meet.
Poor hearts flutter so thin and faded
they just need to be taken
out of circulation altogether -
set fire, burned right
down to newborn ash.
