“Valentine for Ernest Mann” spans four stanzas and 29 lines of free verse, beginning in the perspective of a speaker who has received a request to mail a poem to Ernest Mann. The speaker’s tone is casual and intimate, and she uses second person to directly address Ernest (and by extension the reader), telling him “You can’t order a poem like you order a taco” (Line 1). Beginning the poem in this casual, almost humorous way, Nye establishes the everyday speech she’ll continue to use and signals to the reader that this won’t be a traditional romantic valentine poem. The occasion prompts Nye to consider and examine the questions: “what is a poem?” and “where can one find a poem?” Her tone supports Nye’s overarching claim that poetry is both possible and present in a wide range of places, especially in those places that might initially seem unexpected or unpoetic.

The expanded simile in the first stanza establishes the grounded yet witty tone of the poem with the assertion that one can’t order a poem like a taco and “expect it to be handed back to you / on a shiny plate” (Lines 3-4).