Love Letters: A Poet’s Guide

Review in The Weekend Australian features a small How To column. The editor asked me to write a small piece on how to write a love letter. To say a lot about that would be easy; to write 280 words and say something worth saying, is harder. Then, I got to thinking every poem is a love letter actually, and what I wrote appeared on Saturday, 4 July 2020.

“PROSE IS language making sense,” wrote Octavio Paz (poet, lover and diplomat); “poetry is language making love.”

 The conditions of a poem are the conditions of love. So, if love is what you want to write, poetry is where you need to turn.

 Here, then, is a poet’s guide to love and love’s letters.  

 1. Love is not a market, and its language neither buys nor sells. To love is to inhabit the energy that lifts mountains (Mirabai) and spins planets; let that force be with you when you write.

 2. Love is an accompanied solitude: so, accompany hers. Let her know it’s what makes her tick that beats your heart. Don’t claim her; witness her. Let her be known.

 3. Pretense will get you nowhere; integrity’s an aphrodisiac. Love is not how you should feel; it’s how you do feel.

 4. But no matter how straight you are, come at things slant—love letters are foreplay. Bust indirect moves—the butcherbird, your new favourite song, the morning light. If she loves rivers, speak of rivers, but only if you know how to swim.

5. The best love letters are accidents: poems and emails and posts not written to entreat, but to say with care what moves you and what seems true. To speak from love and not about it calls forth the best love in response.

 6. Love, it turns out, speaks in metaphors and birds. Its rhythm is good; its sentences shapely and trim. This is your love, and it needs your words. If you’ve heard it in a pop song, those are not your words.

7. And don’t leave your run too late. It takes a long time and a dozen drafts to say “I love you” as it’s not been said before.