Writing Sentimental Poetry

This writing gig is getting personal. But hey, when you’re a poet… what isn’t personal?!

Love assumes many forms. It can be hurtful to healing, vulnerable to impregnable, intimate to stone cold, longing to “get away from me!”… it is the most diverse dichotomy in our emotional repertoire. 

Love love love… it is both the answer to a question and a question to an answer. Like the old adage… can’t live with em, can’t live without em… it presents quite the confusing allure that haunts us all. 

We are not meant to be alone.

This theme provides the very fabric of a poets being… whether professed for nature, a person, a place, or even a thing… I’ve written love poems about ice cream for heavens sake! Yet is also has a dark side, that potent fault that pricks our very souls. Yes, the love to hate. 

Dark poets love Lord Byron… he is always one of my go to poets for dark inspirations with a glimmer of light. His poem “Darkness” illustrates this perversion of all that beautiful and true, yet remains a draw upon us all… take the ending of this magnificent blast…

“…the waves were dead; the tides were in their grave, 

The moon, their mistress, had expir'd before; 

The winds were wither'd in the stagnant air, 

And the clouds perish'd; Darkness had no need 

Of aid from them—She was the Universe. “

Byron takes cruel manifestations of the human condition … mankind’s passions, selfishness, death, evil intent, war… mixed with elements of nature, and formulated a hope for love defined as the infinite range of texture it weaves.

William Shakespeare was never one to miss a poignant dart no matter how sweet its intention… demonstrated within this excerpt form “Sonnet #40”…

“I do forgive thy robb’ry, gentle thief,

Although thou steal thee all my poverty;

And yet love knows it is a greater grief

To bear love’s wrong than hate’s known injury.

    Lascivious grace, in whom all ill well shows,

    Kill me with spites, yet we must not be foes.”

Master at turning a phrase, the immortal bard knows his damage control! He’s saying we have to talk it out before it destroys us! 

Intricate poet code… this is what we use, isn’t it? I often have to explain what I’m writing about when my writing may throw my woman into fits… saying one thing meaning another. 

Of course there is the drippy, sappy, overtly romantic poetry that is reminiscent of the sunsets, candle light dinners, and sweet professions our hearts desire. Love poems. So many of them. But they all go to the same place… the heart. Let’s look at “A Red Red Rose” by Robert Burns and prepare for the collective “Awwwwwe!!!!”…

O my Luve is like a red, red rose 

   That’s newly sprung in June; 

O my Luve is like the melody 

   That’s sweetly played in tune. 

So fair art thou, my bonnie lass, 

   So deep in luve am I; 

And I will luve thee still, my dear, 

   Till a’ the seas gang dry. 

Yep… works every time!! Who can resist?

Yet there are so many forms… so many loves. It can go so many places that as poets I am not sure we can ever find the shore of where it all ends as to what can be written of this feeling. “In My Heart Leaps Up”, William Wordsworth sets his adoration to existence itself within the ultimate cinemascope of life itself within his beautiful references to awe inspiring aspects of our natural world…

My heart leaps up when I behold 
   A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began; 
So is it now I am a man; 
So be it when I shall grow old, 
   Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.

I myself hit upon this vein as I realized it is my mothers birthday today, and in haste scribbled her out a poem addressed within a birthday card I had bought as a just in case affair. I placed it on her favorite chair to be found when she wakes up. Direct and simple, when she read my book, she said she liked the poems that meant what they said and said what they meant. Easy to understand. This was fine by me because I’m not Wordsworth! So I wrote this out before I hastily headed out the door to work this morning…

you are the music to my song

always here and never gone

for in my mind it’s you I see

and in my heart you’ll always be…

Simple, direct, and to the point. No poetic code there… just a simple statement of a tender hearted son to his sweet mother on her 83rd birthday. 

Sentimental poetry remains one of my favorite to write. Its surface simplicity hints at the complex currents that run so deep at the water’s edge. It is there always, as a constant muse in its many shapes… inviting poets of all ages, classes, and colors to dive into the universal beauty and even ugliness of its universal truths.

Matt Elmore