I'm not generally a huge fan of occasional poems, but I had fun with the Diwali poem I wrote for the HFR Blog Contest a while back, and speaking of keeping track of time and the passage of time, occasional and seasonal poems are pretty useful. I'm going on blog hiatus while I'm at AWP and visiting my in-laws, so I'll miss Valentine's Day. You would think that Valentine's would be too super cheesy to even approach. I disagree! Wikipedia has some crazy interesting stuff, history of Valentine's and connected customs, including a gallery of beautiful vintage valentines. There's plenty of opportunity for dramatic poems, narrative poems, poems taking an interesting obscure fact or custom as a jumping off point, or ekphrastic poems using the cards. I'm especially interested in the ones that look like vintage tattoos. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentine%27s_Day And that's not even getting into the personal/lyric poems that could come of out comparing ...