Carpe Diem Poetry - Write like an ancient Roman!

I'm nobody! Who are you?

Emily Dickinson

I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us — don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!

I’ve always loved this poem because I can relate to the idea that I’m nobody, an outsider. However, I’m a teacher who has been successful and a writer whose work has been complimented.

When I joined Hubpages, I was pleasantly surprised by how many good writers and poets belonged to this community. Much of the poetry and prose I’ve read is fantastic, funny, touching and well-written. I thought, as a teacher of English at the college-level, it might be fun to create some poetry form exercises, to craft a kind of class for poets who are talented but have never studied formally.

The ‘Carpe Diem’ poem is a good place to start as my students seem to love this form. The term ‘carpe diem’ is a Latin phrase often translated as ‘seize the day’ but sometimes translated as ‘hold the day.’ This phrase was born in ancient Rome in the Odes of Horace, particularly, Do Not Ask (Tu ne quaesieris):“While we / speak, time is envious and / is running away from us. / Seize the day, trusting / little in the future.”

These poems focus on fully participating in the present and the uncertainty of the future. Why wait when we can’t know what tomorrow will offer us?

My students always love Andrew Marvell’s effort to convince his mistress to be intimate in To his Coy Mistress:

Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love's day…

Marvell’s argument is, if we had forever, I’d be happy to wait. We, however, don’t have time.

But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near.

Before we know it, time will steal our youth and our desire; we will age and die in what may seem like a moment.

The grave's a fine and private place,
But none I think do there embrace.

Marvell’s poem asks us, should we die without living, or live before we die?

Now let us sport us while we may…

A more modern example of a carpe diem is the poem Dreams by Langston Hughes:

Hold fast to dreams

For if dreams die

Life is a broken-winged bird

That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams

For when dreams go

Life is a barren field

Frozen with snow.

This poem may seem like a study in sadness and senselessness when compared to To His Coy Mistress, but in truth, all carpe diem poems have at their root the resignation that the future is uncertain. Some poets find great joy in seizing the day, while others see living in the present as the one and only chance of happiness. How do you feel?

To write a carpe diem poem, consider the following:

Does the ecstasy of living in the moment compensate for the uncertainty of the future? Or does the shadow of uncertainty hang over the pleasures we can find today? How will your poem reflect your feelings?

Think about the first line of Marvell’s poem: ‘Had we but world enough, and time.’ Begin your poem with a line about the transitory nature of time or joy.
Although resignation may be an element of the poem’s meaning, carpe diem poems usually offer some possibility of happiness, fleeting as it may be.

If people enjoy this exercise, I’ll write and post more. Let me know.