“Roses are… Violets are” poems are sweet, but you’re a write, and they don’t even get close to your standards. So please, go for quality.
If you missed your opportunity this year, there’s always the next. If not, go ahead and send a late Valentines poem. There’s still time, unless you’re about to die.
So here’s some tips to keep in mind:
- Pick a style. What do you want your love to feel? Make her cry? Make her excited? Annoyingly longing? Remember this when writing your poems. Remember though, even though your story is expressed with love, this may not be echoed in your love’s heart. Don’t explain how sad you are and expect an equal reaction. Induce sadness. Induce excitement. An ebullient style doesn’t necessarily have to be echoed. Hearts aren’t as mimetic as we might believe, so make sure your poem creates, not shows.
- Outline. Yes. Here too. Don’t try to skip this. Do it. What will you start with? An antecedent? A question? Go on, write exactly what you’re going to do.
- Lengthen. Recopy your poem and make it better. Use a Rhyme Dictionary, as it’ll immensely help your poem. Make sure your syllables line up.
- Edit. Go back and replace stupid adjectives, adverbs and verbs with more descriptive versions of themselves. This is when you make everything impressive.
- Revise. Read here for advice on revising just about anything.
- Rewrite. Copy what you wrote into your favorite visual publisher program. Word works fine. Insert pictures, preferably those that you drew yourselves, into the document. Pictures should generally be red and white.
- Visualize. Option One — Computer: Choose Valentines Day-themed colors. Use an appropriate font. Fiolex Girls MS is a font that comes with Vista and is especially designed for writing love poems. I would only use it for the title, and probably make the rest Vivaldi, Edwardian Script, Freestyle Script, French Script, or something of the sort. Bold the text, make it white and make the background red, pink, or a combo of the two.
Option Two –Write: If you have a nice handwriting, this is the choice for you. Write it on a plain sheet of white paper, glued onto a pink/red piece of paper. Calligraphy pens are a good idea. I suggest you use one if you have one. - Frame. Optional, but good anyway. Use a red border.
- Present with flowers/candy/some other type of present.
February 17, 2008 at 3:12 am
I wrote a love poem for a crush of mine, but mine was written after I read this, and wasn’t based on these 9 pointers. For one, poems don’t have to rhyme. We were taught that in fourth grade, and in my opinion, poems have much more meaning when they don’t rhyme. Mine didn’t, and I was much happier that way. Another main difference is that the “purpose” of my poem was not to induce a certain feeling in my crush, but rather tell her what I thought of her. Another minor difference is the outline part. No, I did not skip the outline, but I organized it differently. I chose all the pointers of what I saw in her (e.g. her intelligence, beauty, voice, radiance, etc.) and wrote a couple of verses for each quality.
Thanks again,
Gilad
February 18, 2008 at 9:02 pm
Okay. Thanks for sharing. I do believe that good poems rhyme, because this generates emotion in the reader, for some reason. Non-rhyming poems may contain more meaning, but more of that meaning is reflected at the reader.
Your reader doesn’t always retain everything that you wrote, and rhymes somehow help higher that percentage. But your style is your style.