Love and Poetry have been going steady for awhile now. Shakespeare’s Love Sonnets are a classic stand-by, but as Elizabeth Bennet advised so wisely: “I am convinced that one good sonnet will starve [love] entirely away”, so if you are planning to give your Valentine a good poem, make sure it is a good one. And maybe steer clear of sonnets.
The Pulitzer Prize winning poet, Ted Kooser, began sending Valentine poems to his lady friends in 1986 and a tradition was born. All of these poems are collected in Valentines, along with illustrations by Robert Hanna. These poems are not overly sentimental (a sign of a good poet) rather he writes of the holiday we all love (and loathe) with candor. All kinds of love make appearances in this collection: unrequited, worn and tattered, lingering, passionate, and impartial. But Ted Kooser’s modern interpretation of an age-old subject is fresh and full of vitality.
For You, Friend
this Valentine’s Day, I intend to stand
for as long as I can on a kitchen stool
and hold back the hands of the clock,
so that wherever you are, you may walk
even more lightly in your loveliness;
so that the weak, mid-February sun
(whose chill I willl feel from the face
of the clock) cannot in any way
lessen the lights in your hair, and the wind
(whose subtle insistence I will feel
in the minute hand) cannot tighten
the corners of your smile. People
drearily walking the winter streets
will long remember this day:
how they glanced up to see you
there in a storefront window, glorious,
strolling along on the outside of time.
Pablo Neruda wrote the Captain’s Verses to Matilde, his lover and companion in exile. The poems are full of passion and energy. Plus, what says passionate love more than poetry in Spanish. Neruda writes of the highs and lows of love (yes, sometimes he gets angry) but the translucency gives his poems more power.
Night on the Island
All night I have slept with you
next to the sea, on the island.
Wild and sweet you were between pleasure and sleep,
between fire and water.
Perhaps very late
our dreams joined
at the top or at the bottom,
up above like branches moved by a common wind,
down below like red roots that touch.
Perhaps your dream
drifted from mine
and through the dark sea
was seeking me
as before,
when you did not yet exist,
when without sighting you
I sailed by your side,
and your eyes sought
what now–
bread, wine, love, anger–
I heap upon you because you are the cup
that was waiting for the gifts of my life.
I have slept with you
all night long while the dark earth spins
with the living and the dead,
and on waking suddenly
in the midst of the shadow
my arm encircled your wrist.
La Noche un la Isla
Toda la noche he dormido contigo
junto al mar, en le isla.
Salvaje y dulce era s entre el placer y el sueno,
entre el fuego y el agua.
Tal vez tu sueno
se separo del mio
y por el mar oscuro
me buscaba
com antes,
cuando aun no existias,
cuando sin dicaisarte
navague por tu lado,
y tus ojos buscaban
lo que ahora
–pan, vino, amor y colera–
te doy a manos llenas
porque tu eres la copa
que esperaba los doned de mi vida.
He dormido contifo
toda la noche mientras
la oscura tierra gira
con vivos y con muertos,
y al despertar de pronto
en medio de la sombra
mi brazo rodeaba tu cintura.
What would romantic poetry be without E.E. Cummings Erotic Poems? The words are stark on the page, tightly edited and cropped and exposed. Cummings seeming stream-of-consciousness work lends itself easily to the subject of physical love. The poems are sensuously rough and gritty. When you read them, you can’t help but imagine him typing furiously away on his typewriter, to passionate to bother with capitalization except for emphasis. A woman has just left and the floor is striped with the shadows cast from his blinds. I may not know what he means, but I have felt what he has feels.
ii.
when i have thought of you somewhat too
much and am become perfectly and
simply Lustful….sense of gradual stir
of beginning muscle, and what it will do
to me before shutting….understand
i love you….feel your suddenly body reach
for me with a speed of white speech
(the simple instant of perfect hunger
Yes)
how beautifully swims
the fooling world in my huge blood,
cracking brains A swiftlyenormous light
–and furiously puzzling through,prismatic,whims,
the chattering self perceives with hysterical fright
a comic tadpole wriggling in delicious mud.
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