May I suggest hay(na)ku instead? No restriction of syllables or stresses, just a three line poem with one word in the first line, two in the second, and three in the third. You get to be following a received form without pissing off haiku lovers.* Win-win.
*Because haiku lovers will CUT YOU.
I like poetry, but I wouldn’t want a guy to write a poem for or about me unless he was actually a good poet, and about 99.9% of the population isn’t. So, I guess that’s a no.
My first serious boyfriend wrote me a poem about the first time we kissed. I loved it. He was a good writer. If he hadn’t been, I probably would have appreciated the effort anyway.
If someone that I was not interested in, decided to write me any kind of poem, humorous or romantic, I would probably hate it or be indifferent. If such a person gave me that instead of a gift, it would not be appreciated.
But when I voted, I was thinking of JMK (first boyfriend) and so I voted for the first option.
I do not like poetry much, in general.
If a guy I was really into wrote me a poem, I would be touched, but I would also be nervous, because I’m secretly gonna critique that poem, and it’s got about a 99% chance of being found seriously wanting, and that will affect the way I feel about him.
If I happen to be married to him and he writes me a poem then all these feelings will be buried and I will express delight. Likewise if he brings me flowers and they are some cheap kind of flower that either I don’t like, or they look like they were used at a funeral two weeks ago and are dropping petals all over the damn place.
I can’t answer the poll as written, because I would like it better than a thoughtful gift, provided that the poem was heartfelt, and I would not rank any particular “heartfelt” gift over any other, poem or otherwise. If the poem was only funny or thoughtful, then I would prefer a heartfelt something else.
I would very much like a poem, and I would very much like any other heartfelt gift. I suppose if we’re forcing the choice, then a heartfelt poem would give me more personal insight into the person’s thoughts than a heartfelt “thing”, so in a face-off of the “Heartfelt” category, the poem wins.
Gateway, [del]why do you assume only women[/del] you seem to be assuming that only women care for poetry as a gift, and perhaps as a form of literature. If so, why do you make that assumption?
As someone who has studied literature for years, I’m sorry to say, no. In general, I think I probably don’t understand much poetry and do not appreciate it. There are a few poems I’m sure that I could say I liked. (I do like the one about the road less traveled.) But the more abstract it is, the less I understand it and the less I can appreciate it. I have great respect for people who write poetry because it seems to me like the highest art of writing (although I could make a case for porn being super difficult to write well). Part of me suspects that actually, most poetry is shit and it’s not that I’m missing anything, it’s just bad poetry.
ETA: I do view song lyrics as poetry. In that case, then yes, I love poetry, as long as it has a soundtrack. I think hip hop and rap have some of the best poets out there. Eminem might be a heinous individual, but he’s a great writer of poetry.
You are suffering under the misconception, common to students of bad literature teachers, that the poetry you dislike is too good for you to understand. I suspect that the poems you dislike are just overwritten, over-allusive, pointless bits of suckiness. Like Ezra Pound. There is probably a good reason that no one ever beat him to death with his own typewriter but I do not know what it could be.
I agree. Though grudgingly when it comes to that Mathers … person.
My SO wrote me poems many moons ago and they were good, too! Not pretentious, but genuine. He wrote me songs as well, and sometimes still does. The songs are usually silly, the poems both silly and more serious.
His grandmother wrote poems for all occasions. Sometimes she would just jot something down and send it to that person. Nothing special, nothing pretentious, just a little rhyme. (Actually, with her I would say she wrote “little rhymes”, while my SO wrote poetry and sometimes little rhymes.) I liked how to her it was not a big thing at all. Everyone would get her little poems, like her macaroons. She’d write them for occasions, too, and even wrote one for her own funeral that she recited to us in hospital.
In the Netherlands, Saint Nicolas is celebrated by writing silly poems for the person whose name you draw out of a hat, often along with a gift concealed in a pretend home made gift that gently teases the person. They are usually terrible poems (or, again, rhymes), but a good deal of fun. So perhaps writing a little poem isn’t such a big deal to Dutch people.
I assumed he was considering writing a poem for a woman so was canvassing to see if it’s a good idea.
I would, I think. I haven’t really thought it before. But I think so.
I do like William Blake. And Edgar Allan Poe. Maybe I just like the dark and twisted stuff. listening to poets and poetry lovers talk about poetry is a lot like listening to art critics and to people at wine tastings: they talk a whole lot of shit, but rarely say anything meaningful at all (to anyone but themselves). It’s like, this is my big chance to sound like an intellectual asshole, so let me string together every term I’ve ever heard into one meaningless sentence so people don’t realize I don’t know what the hell I just heard. Poetry snobs will tell you (like the art critics) if you don’t like it, you just don’t understand.
I’m not gonna say he hits it outta the park with every single song. Then again, nobody does.
If you’re ever in the mood to hear some laughably horrible poetry, rent the movie Dancing at the Blue Iguana. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a vignette piece about the lives of several different strippers at a club called The Blue Iguana (fun fact: Daryl Hannah does a pole trick right in the beginning of the movie that is called “iguana.” See what they did there? Huh? Do you? :rolleyes: ). One of the strippers is a wanna-be poet in her off hours. She goes to poetry jams where the worst poetry I’ve ever heard is recited. It either completely ruined or completely made the movie for me, I’m not sure which. There would be a heartwrenching, super-emotional scene and in the next shot, there’s Sandra Oh reading shitty poetry that makes me laugh but wasn’t intended to (I think). So the poetry took me out of the movie, but for some scenes, that was a welcome relief. Some bits of it are kind of heavy but mostly: strippers and bad poetry. What could possibly go wrong? 
I am a suckered for poetry. I’ve been an avid reader and writer since I was 8 years old, when I took my first poetry class.
I’ve never had a man write me a poem, but I would be over the moon if they did.
I think some people in the thread are really overthinking poetry. It’s just a broad creative act that uses language. It can be anything, a funny rhyme or a line that makes you think.
In Rotterdam the dustbin vans have lines of poetry on them, each one a few different lines. Nothing pretentious. Just a line that might evoke something, a feeling or an image, when you read it. On their office buildings, the ugliest building on the dreariest spot by the motorway, it says in neon letters: “Cities don’t take cover from the rain.” - It’s not asking for analysis, or for you to be clever to understand it. You read it, and you just think “Yeah, that’s true. Cities don’t take cover from the rain. Poor cities. Huh.” - Point being, you never looked at cities that way before.
It seems rather a shame to take poetry as something exclusive or pretentious. It’s just a bunch of words used creatively to convey something in a certain way. If someone writes you a bunch of words to convey a little creative thought, what’s not to like?
Your awesome love poem inspired me. I thought of one I’ma give to the next girl I would like to date.
Roses are red,
violets are blue,
would you like to go out on date and if so can we go dutch because I don’t make much money and also I don’t like italian so maybe wanna go to McDonalds?
I love
Little baby ducks.
I think
Vachel Lindsey sucks.
If you reject me,
I fear I’ll die of
The screaming bloody flux
Unless you’re Philip Sydney, you should not write poems for me. I guarantee that it will only end in tears.
Actually, the OP specified “heartfelt” poetry given in lieu of a gift. So that’s why people are focusing on the cheesiness/frequent badness of amateur poems written to express deeply felt personal emotions, and written with the goal of evoking personal emotions.
In that case, no I don’t like heartfelt poetry… actually scratch that , it depends on the tone of the poetry and whether it feels like he (I’m assuming the poet/OP is a man) was making an effort to express his feelings sincerely.
A little creative thought can be anything though. Just because someone thinks it up doesn’t make it inherently likeable.
Everyone’s hearts are connected to sense organs in a different way. I’ve always been more of a visual/auditory person moreso than verbal. Play me a song or paint me a picture and I’m likely to feel what you’re feeling. But a “bunch of words” are going to go right to my intellect, not my heart. If those words don’t make any “sense” to me, I’m probably not going to be impressed. It’s not intentional. It’s not like I want to be like this. It’s just how I am.