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From the experts, a few tips on the language of love

By M.V. Moorhead

There’s a vogue these days for giving people gifts you’ve made yourself. It’s a lovely thought, but what if you aren’t good with your hands? What if your birdhouses look like they’d be condemned? What if your pottery looks like a Neanderthal’s cast-off early efforts?

Well, maybe you’re better with words.

If so, why not try your aim at Cupid’s form of archery? Why not try writing your Valentine a love poem?

In case you haven’t penned any verse since you got dumped back in college or something, I asked a couple of working poets to offer some pointers.

One of these bards, Jim Natal, a finalist for the Pen Center West Award and the Publishers’ Marketing Association Ben Franklin Award, reads from his collections Talking Back to Rocks and In the Bee Trees at 7 p.m. Friday, Feb. 14 at Changing Hands Bookstore.

The other, Sarah Vap Huggins, poetry editor of ASU’s Hayden’s Ferry Review, recently led “How Do I Love Thee?”, a love-poetry workshop at the store.

Wrangler News: Do you have a favorite love poem, or one that you think is the greatest in English (or any language)?

Jim Natal: I am very partial to the love poems of Pablo Neruda, how he’s able to make his leaps. Even in translation, he’s stunning. I also like the one by e.e. cummings that contains the line “Nobody, not even the rain, had such small hands.” And one by Archibald McLeish that begins “Not Marble, Nor the Gilded Monuments.”

Sarah Vap-Huggins: My favorite love poems are "Free Union," by [Andre] Breton. And "First Love," by Jean Valentine.

WN: What makes a great love poem?

JN:  I think maybe the approach to the relationship. In some ways, in modern poetry, maybe an indirect approach works more than an overt comparison, a “Shall I compare thee to summer’s day.” Something where you build image on image, and in the end you get a much more powerful effect than “Roses are Red, Violets are Blue.”

SVH: A great love poem, in my opinion, is one in which one truly attempts to understand oneself, and/or the loved one, and/or the nature of love (including its imperfections and painful parts) instead of simply idealizing love or the loved one.

WN: What makes a bad love poem?

JN: Gushing emotion, and, basically, lack of skill—just using trite comparisons, shopworn images...What you always walk the line with is that you might come off sounding like a Hallmark card. On the other hand, there’s a whole school of poets today who avoid emotion altogether, and I don’t believe in that, either.

SVH: Any one-sided love poem, be it idealizing or "poor me they don't love me back." This type of poem, to me, is almost an oppressive way of not really seeing someone you love, not acknowledging the things that make them who they are, just the things you happen to like. And woe to he or she who is complex.

WN: How would you suggest that a complete novice start, if he or she wanted to write a love poem?

JN: The way I work, I tend to just write it all down. You never know what you’re going to say; if you do, you shouldn’t be writing. Just write it all down, then go back and put in the poetry, worry about the line breaks and so on. Some people say they don’t revise, and more power to them. If you can just throw it out there and have it be great, you’re better than me.

SVH: No one is a novice at love. We all love all our lives, and we talk about love all the time. It is a natural instinct, I think, to write a love poem. One thing I might suggest is to avoid cliches at first, to write down all the words you think of as love-poem words-- heart, roses, spring, sweet, etc.-- then challenge yourself not to use any of those words. This will help you use a language that is specific to you. Then, just honestly approach your feelings in all their complexity for the person you love.

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