Heart Broken Poems

An Interview with Matthew Henriksen

Johannes argued that I wanted to put the reader through a sort of violence of experience, and he also called me a Romantic. Then he called himself a Romantic after explaining that some people don't want to "go there" when reading poetry. Of course, I agree with Johannes on those counts, but I contend that people who don't want to "go there" might as well not read poetry. Yes, I want to be devoured by experience, but I don't have any illusions about transcending it. We live in a closed world, regardless of our ideas. Our ideas themselves form part of the boundary between the known and the unknown. Sadness and joy arrive from the same source: that we cannot encounter the closed world in its entirety. We can't know everything, but we can experience intensely. I believe what Walter Pater said art does: heightens experience and so makes the most of our moments. When I ask my two-year-old daughter if she's hungry, I impose a mandate on the language so I can get a necessary result. Why impose mandates on poetry when each image offers an infinite playground? Bees as imagery provoke an untranslatable experience through the variety of sensory appeals. No bee is going to devour me, but the imagination allows us to "go there." The sound of bees buzzing resembles the sensations of multiple stings. The imagined stings remind me of putting my bruised thumb in cold water. The cold water can awake a sensation that might suggest the numbness of the empty universe burning with so many stars like needles in a foot numb as a pincushion. Each experience contains an aspect of the infinite. I don't want to "go there" when it's time for my daughter's lunch, but I don't comprehend another purpose for poetry. People who talk about meaning in poems and then put quotation marks around the word are not reading poetry. Language, like any aspect of experience, can't avoid meaning. The word "thumb" contains infinite associations, some of which we can't verbalize, but poetry can evoke meaning beyond language. Most contemporary narrative and rhetorical poems bore me because they limit themselves to statement, but the lyric can tell a narrative of perspective through immersion in an experience and can convey rhetoric by superimposing the poem's perspective over the reader's senses. I don't want my poems to deform anyone. I'd like to smash the deformed notions we too often wear as protective goggles. It would take exactly one bee to devour me.

How To Compose A Heartbroken Poem

When you have recently been dumped by someone you love, writing poetry is a great way to express your feelings. Here’s how to write a heartbroken poem.

Many of the great poems throughout human history have been on the subject of heartbreak. Some of those include “Never Try to Trick Me With a Kiss” from Sylvia Plath, “My Letters! All Dead.  Paper, Mute, and White,” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and “Speak!” by William Woodsworth.

A poem is just simply the outpouring of your spirit set to form. The form of a poem is crucial because it gives structure to your thoughts.

Poetry was once far more stylized than it is today. As an example, the Sonnet, which was popular in William Shakespeare’s day, has very firm rules including exactly 14 lines as well as a formal “a-b-a-b” rhyme structure and conclusion in a couplet.

Other strictly controlled poetry includes the Japanese Haiku (one line with five syllables, the next with seven syllables, and then a final line with five syllables) as well as the limerick (which usually isn’t proper as a heartbroken poem!)

Modern poetry has a tendency toward free verse. Free verse can easily have rhymed or unrhymed lines and also no metrical pattern. What sets free verse aside from prose is that the poems have complex patterns of one sort or another that readers or listeners will perceive to be part of a coherent whole.

While some people can just start writing a heartbroken poem and produce something which captures their feelings, other people need to go through a process. If you are one of the latter, consider this:

1. State your purpose – if your purpose is to “wash that guy (or girl) right out of your hair” you have got your goal.

2. Decide on the form of the poem.

3. Write down your thoughts so that you can easily organize them in poetical form.

4. Use descriptive images to voice your feelings. Unhappiness, despair, or grief are all abstract concepts. Bring them to life by making use of concrete similes or metaphors.

5. Use poetic devices to make your poem more “poem like.” These can incorporate rhyme, meter assonance, alliteration, and repetition. 

6. Put your most robust statement at the end of the poem.

7. Edit the poem once you finish it. Most great poems are not written in one draft. Get feedback from your friends on how to help make it better.

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