Writing "Great" Romantic Love Poetry!!!
~ A How To Guide ~
Writing a 'great' love poem starts with your theme (subject), the concept, idea, feeling or material/physical object that your poem shall center around. If you're wring about a person (or anything for that matter), asks yourself what do I want to express about this person (thing). If you're writing to a person, asks yourself what I want to say, express, to this person. Asks yourself, as well, also, how can I best do as such, best bring my message across and make it expressive of my true sentiments.
The key is, after you have your theme/subject is to build upon it, build around it. You have to build or built up your poem, layer it with the sentiment, expressiveness, authenticity, of what you're trying to get across. What you want to do is use words, imagery, metaphors, that modify your subject, theme, such as descriptive phrases, adjectives, adverbs, nouns and alike. You must write not only to say but to express. You want to express that love, express that adoration, admiration, affinity. You want to express that of which has you so captivated, captured. You want to capture that emotion, feeling, and if it's the beauty of your muse that has you captured so, then, your poem needs to be expressive of that beauty.
In your poem, no matter what it is you're trying to impart, you want a congruence of expression, symmetry, in and of what you're trying to voice, affirm. One of the hallmarks of a "great" romantic love poem or any 'great' poem for that matter is how well everything corresponds and/or reflexes, one another and is woven together - that is to say, that everything in the poem highlights or modifies each other, one another, and work together well. So, when you're writing a love poem - most especially if you're trying to write a "great" one - you want it to flow well, have rhythm. As I mentioned before, you want the poem to have symmetry, congruence. You, also, want to give your poem a tone and diction expressive of what you're trying to articulate, convey.
Everything in your poem must work together. Every word, phrase, line, of you poem needs to express, be expressive of that beauty, that love, adoration, admiration, infatuation, affinity that holds you. It's not the emotion that makes a 'great' love poem 'great' but the expressiveness of it. Stating something can attest someone to it, but expressing it, allows them to feel it. The better one can express the sentiment in and of a poem, the better that poem will be. Don't just say, "She is beautiful" or "I love her", rather expound of that, example: "she is as beautiful as the sun setting, with orange glow, over the most picturesque landscape of beautiful garden foliage, yet, still, this does not capture nor compare to the beauty of my love." Now, we have a picture in our minds of just how beautiful she is, and can somewhat come to understand the opulent splendor of her beauty, or instead of just simply, "I love her" say "I love her, as the flower love being kissed, by the sunlight and showered, by the rain, soaking in their life giving essence, and as the flowers get life, from those things, so does she give life to me." See, the key in trying to write a great love poem is expression, the expression and expressiveness of whatever it is that's you're trying to resonate through and within your poem (being that of emotion, feeling, sentiment and such). It is not the sentiment in and of a romantic love poem that separates a 'great' one from the others but how well that sentiment, feeling, emotion is expressed!!! All great love poems in some facet or form are well expressed. I would say, from my experience as a lover of romantic poetry and as a romantic poet myself that the number one key to a "great" love poem is the beauty, in and of its expression and how well that beauty is translated, expressed, in an elegant, eloquent, and artistic manner!!!
It's not what you express, but how (or how well) you express it!!!
Largely, what makes a "great" love poem "great" is its ability to captivate the reader and make the reader wish they where that person being adored, doted upon, to make the reader wish for a love like the one - of which they are reading. A 'great' love poem is a stirring love poem!!!
_____________________
The Romantic Poets:
William Blake, Lord Byron, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy B. Shelley, William Wordsworth, John Keats, Robert Burns.
