Introduction
Love in poetry is not uncommon, as it is not uncommon in songs and other artistic mediums. The main point of my essay is to show that love in poetry has its place, and that the reason it has its place is because it is somehow negative in most cases. I will take you step-by-step and show you how I came to this conclusion.
Body
You often find that poetry helps people overcome very negative feelings. The most prominent type of negative feeling expressed in poetry is sorrow. That is why poetry is rife during wars and rife in prisons. It is also quite common when dealing with a broken heart because of the sheer amount of sorrow felt by the heartbroken one. Love may also exist for a person or living creature that has passed away. Such love and the passing of that person or creature will create sorrow that again may lead to love being used in poetry. Sorrow is one of the most prominent reasons why love may be used in a poem.
One of the lesser prominent negative feelings that are expressed by poetry is anger and frustration. This is more commonly seen in rap songs, which are basically poetry with a musical backing. Rap songs are often about anger and frustration, which is often why many of them have adult themes. A person that was, or is, in love and was betrayed or dumped may feel angry and frustrated, and that too is something that people express via poetry.
There are plenty of reasons why love may appear in the form of poetry for a negative reason, but one cannot ignore the reasons why it may appear for positive reasons. People sometimes express their positive loving feelings via poetry because it is an outlet for their feelings. This often happens more so during periods where the lovers are separated by distance. Love poems are often sent to and from people in prison to those outside as each express their feelings of love for the other. Love poetry is often seen with people in the armed forces and their lovers at home, where the distance between the couple is the catalyst for the poetry writing.
Can distance and/or a lack of each partner seeing the other be construed as a negative reason for love in poetry? In other words, if a couple are separated by distance, then the lonely and longing feelings may be construed as negative, and may explain why the person(s) write the poetry. This is a good point, but most will write poetry in this case as an expression and token of love, other than a way to complain about loneliness or longing. If a person was complaining about loneliness, longing or even jealousy, then it would be written or spoken as oppose to put into a poem. That is why I do then believe the “distance” issue to be one that causes love to be used in poetry for a negative reason.
Conclusion
As you can see, love in poetry may happen because people want to express their feelings of love, but more often it happens because of a negative emotion. That negative emotion may be negative feelings such as sorrow, frustration or anger. Each also has its own specific incarnations, such as revenge, betrayal and depression. This also explains why love is featured in poetry in such a wide range of ways, from angry poems at those that caused hurt, to poems begging for a lover to come back. There are positive, or nice, reasons why love appears in poetry, but it is my contention that love appears in poetry for negative reasons more than positive reasons.
