Ah, January. A time of hope, excitement, and looking forward… but also a time of bittersweet farewell to last year. That’s why January is a perfect time to focus on learning to write an aubade.
Since we’ve been working on forms for a year now, I thought it would be interesting this month to focus on a genre, rather than a form, of poetry. An aubade is a dawn leavetaking between lovers. Traditionally, it is a poem written from the point of view of a departing lover, speaking from the door or window, to his or her beloved who is still asleep in bed. If you’re planning to join us this month with an aubade, I’d really prefer that you give that full formal definition a shot. On the other hand, technically, an aubade is just a poem that invokes both lovers and the dawn. So you could do that too… but it’s a little bit of a cop-out, I think, because if you’re really trying to grasp a new form or genre of writing you should shoot for mastery of the most difficult bits; if you don’t reach that pinnacle your writing may still be quite good. On the other hand, if you aim for the lowest bar possible and miss… you see where I’m going here, right? Of course you do.
no, really, what’s the form?
No, really, there isn’t one. If you’re not sure what form to use, why not scroll back through our writing help section for the last year’s worth of poetry slams to see if a form catches your fancy?
okay, so if there’s no form, what are the elements?
There are three basic elements that must be included or alluded to in an aubade: dawn, lovers, and a leavetaking.
- Dawn. Invoke dawn with color, light, descriptions, clocks, anything to really capture the sense of having woken with the morning light. It’s not adequate to invoke just waking up- people do take naps in the afternoon, after all, or doze off next to a lover and wake at midnight. If you’re writing a poem about missing your curfew, it’s not an aubade until you’re in real trouble, young lady.
- Lovers. Okay, sex isn’t technically necessary. But you need to be addressing a beloved person (one source I looked at said object, which is both magnificently strange and totally apropos). Don’t write a poem about kissing your actual baby goodbye on your way to a deployment. That might be a good poem but it had better not be an aubade. Wrong kind of love.
- Leavetaking. The narrator or subject of the poem has to leave. HAS TO. No, really, you gotta get out of there. Regretfully. Lingerlingly. But you need. To. Go. Generally an aubade captures your point of view as you stand in the doorway (or window, I’m not judging you) watching your lover sleep and wishing you could stay just a little longer. But you can’t. Get out. Write your poem and get out.
I still have no idea what you’re talking about.
Okay. That’s fine. Here are a few aubades to get you started:
Shakespeare! This is a very very loose aubade by our definition, ending with an exhortation to the lover to arise.
Donne. Disclaimer: I kind of hate this poem, which is held up as a shining example of the aubade. It’s circuitous and the hook isn’t particularly clever, although it’s possible that my reading is colored by the literally thousands of imitators?
Mura. More a “beloved object” than a “beloved” here, but see the tenderness that shines through this poem.
Thomas. A modern take on the aubade.
Howard. A very traditional aubade- this is a really good example of including all the elements of the genre.
As you can see from the examples, there really isn’t a requirement for a form, and you don’t have to get every single little bit of every single element in to be writing an aubade- but do get the feeling right. Love, and the dawn, and a parting (welcome or not).
