Poetry is a literary art, a way to express ones feelings, a form of writing. Poetry can tell stories or explain life experiences. Poetry can come in many forms and styles. These styles come from different literary movements like the romanticism, modernism, and post-modernism. Poetry can be writing in many different poetic forms. Examples of poetic forms are haiku, concrete, limerick, metered stanzas, and free verse.

The poem “My Dear John” is a free verse poem made up of 18 lines and six stanzas. A free verse poem is a form of poetry which refrains from meter patterns, rhyme, or any other musical pattern by definition. The beat pattern of the poem is{5,4,6,3,11,17,11,16,6,11,12,5,12, 7,6,8,7,8}. The rhyme scheme of the poem is {a,b,c,b,c,d,a,e,f,g,h,I,j,k,l,m,n,o}.

The poems meaning to me is very strong and being the author of the poem makes those feelings towards the poem come from my heart. I based the poem off true life feelings and off the movie “Dear John”. I came up with the poem because I like the story line of the movie and it fit into my life in some ways. The part of the poem I incorporated that was similar to the movie was “One year I have with you, then you’re gone, one year to fall for you and grow to love you, then I will have to watch you walk out that door to fight for our country.” This is similar to both the movie line and my life because in the movie the main characters fall in love and then the guy goes off to fight for his country and is closely related to my life too.

The visual symbolizes my poem in many ways. The hands are of a woman and a man who’s about to leave to fight for his country. How tight they are clenched shows their feelings for each other. I choose this picture for the poem because if you ever have to let someone go away you can know just by holding their hand that the feelings you share will still be there when they return home.

In summary this is a basic “Dear John” story told in a poetic form. The effect you get from reading this will vary. If you know someone who is leaving for the military or armed forces this might leave a bigger impact as to someone who doesn’t know someone who is. The men and woman who risk their lives for our country and the family members or loved ones of them are what keep this country so close to one another. Praying for them to stay safe is just one little thing to insure their safety. They are the true heroes of our country.