igobymanynames

Soemone I know once wrote a love poem and used he words "feline fur." I happen to think that was the worst choice of words that could have been used. Not only that it sounds bad, but is uncreative and an indiscriminately used metaphor. Other than that it was a good poem, alhough the ideas flowed like the directions for writing a love poem that I found in Playboy when I was growing up. But there are degrees of good even when following a direcions and jumping through hoops. Like everything in the world it comes down to Tybalt and Mercutio. Tybalt might not even be able to tell why the following poem is so much better. Of course, what does one expect from "the villain of arithmetic?"

What A Pair of Eyes Can Promise
by Charles Baudelaire

I love, pale one, your lifted eyebrows bridging
Twin darknesses of flowing depth.
But however deep they are, they carry me
Another way than that of death.

Your eyes, doubly echoing your hair's darkness
--That leaping, running mane --
Your eyes, though languidly, instruct me : "Poet
And connoisseur of love made plain,

If you desire fulfilment of the promise,
The ecstasy that is your trade,
You can confirm the truth, from thigh to navel,
Of all that we have said.

You will find my white breasts heavy
With the weight of their rough, bronze coins,
And, under a soft as velvet, rounded belly,
Poised between ambered loins,

A fleece, not golden, but for richness sister
To that hair with darkness bright.
Supple and springing -- and as boundless
As a deep, starless night !"

I do not believe in "writers." A poet, in any sense of the title, is someone who writes and is not a writer.