The Top 5 Unforgiveable Mistakes When Creating A Romantic Poem

Folks have been composing love poems for thousands of years. There are classical Greek legendary poems about dangerous love betwee
Goddesses and mortals. The Romans penned intense love poems about love amongst war and terrible combat. From ancient Britain come romantic love poems of forbiddin trysts in black forests and aristocratic romance between knights and fair maidens. Scandinavia lends us Norse legendary poems of love, of couples kept apart by hundreds of miles of frigid ocean, of bold Vikings killed on bloody raids, their last thoughts of cherished loved ones left behind.

And then comes the time honored era of poems for lovers; the verse of John Donne and Milton, the eternal sonnets of Shakespeare, and needless to say the poems of the English Romantic poets who sang and wrote love as if it were a way of life.

And finally we have the modern day era of romantic poems, as the rules of rigid structure and rhyme were thrown away and curious innovative forms blossomed; cold, hopeless love poetry from England in the first few decades of the 20th century; the work of the Harlem Renaissance, full of love in the sweltering heat of summer and the underground crannies of jazz clubs and dive bars; American poems which outlined the immigrant experience, modern pioneers who travelled to the New World in search of a new life and left love behind; the poems of the great wars, of brave husbands slain and loyal wives left behind, verses that express that wartime air of simultaneous togetherness and separation; the beat poetry of the 1960s and 1970s, spat out in smoky basements; and the intellectual, academic poetry of the modern era.

And through it all, the same knots, weaves and threads, the same tales told over countless generations, the same frustration, sadness, desperate need, but more than anything else the same passion and cherishing of precious moments snatched from the vicious maw of time, those rare repreives where lovers rejoice in each other.

Love poetry expresses something that is essentially human, something which everyone feels at some point in their lives those torrents and undercurrents of feeling which chart the raging wave of existence. For however long humans live and love, romantic poetry will be written and spoken aloud.

But composing poetry is deceptive. “How hard can it possibly be,” you might say, “to cobble together words on a sheet of paper?” A superb painting or a classic piece of orchestral music clearly displays its artistry, the sweat and blood of its construction resonant in every chord or stroke of the brush. But the splendor of a truly great poem is in its naturalness, the seemingly simple way in which a select few words come to be placed in a certain order.

Writing love poems is hard, and generally it is only after trying very hard that the true difficulty of the task becomes clear.

So to that end, here are the 5 most frequent and corrosive errors made by people writing love poetry. But don’t despair! As common as these faults are, they're just as simple to correct or prevent.

1) Show Instead Of Tell

“Show, don’t tell” is a classic maxim of any kind of creative writing in general, but it's more crucial for poetry than anything else. Being in love can fill you so full of feelings that they demand immediate expression, and sometimes the only outlet is to hastily scrawl a poem. But to be able to compose a high quality poem, you have to show why you’re experiencing those thoughts.

An easy way to get going is to only write down actions and material objects, not feelings themselves. If you pick the right subject to write about and you use effective, lyric descriptions in your writing, the emotions ought to be obvious to anybody reading your poetry.

2) Use The Fewest Words Possible

Admittedly, several of the finest poems of all time are epic texts that span numerous volumes. But unless you are writing the next Paradise Lost, keep to the absolute minimum number of words you need . Poems are all about concentrating on language at the smallest level, analyzing every word and line break with watchful attention to detail. Having lots of surplus words hovering around dilutes the meaning and identity of the poem.

As an experiment, compose a rough first draft of your poem and then remove every word you can while still allowing the poem to make sense. Reintroduce words one by one and see if you think it makes the poem better or worse. If it doesn’t make it better-get rid of it!

3) Don’t Be Constrained By Rhyme Without Reason

For 1000s of years, an inflexible structure of rhyme and syllabic regulation was a hallmark of all poems. Fortunately, in the modern day these restrictions have been lifted, so you are free to write absolutely anything you want. Don't feel that you ought to make your poem rhyme. In contrast to popular belief, writing a poem that rhymes is very hard. Unless you’re extremely comfortable with vocabulary, rhythm and meter, you risk your poetry sounding clumsy and imprecise.

The thing that identifies a poem is careful choice of language, not whether or not it rhymes. By all means experiment, but by no means feel constrained to write in rhyming couplets just because that’s what some people did 1000s of years ago!

4) Don't Write As If You Were Born In The 1800s

If you're writing your poem in the 21st century, embrace that fact. Write in comprehensive sentences and don’t arbitarily move around words to fit your rhyme scheme.

Some very prominent historical poetry is written in ways which sound really odd to modern day people but they were written that way because of the linguistic conventions and styles of the day, not because there’s anything inherently poetic about shuffling words around into a new awkward order and sprinkling apostrophes where they have no business being.

5) Don't Forget Your Audience

If you want your poetry to be appreciated by other people, you must make it accessible. There’s nothing wrong with writing poetry purely about a personal experience, as long as it’s just for you. But if you want your work to be read by a wide audience, you must give the text meaning that other people can appreciate. If your writing is too inaccessible, there’s no incentive for anyone to give it any attention.

As a final point, keep in mind that all of these ideas are simply guides to help you write the best poetry you can. If you have a very compelling reason for dismissing any of this advice, that’s fine too; after all, rules are meant to be broken. Nobody can tell you what to write, because above all your poem is yours!