A Year of Love Poetry, Day-by-Day: Impromptu - Meng Chiao

(*Depending on the speed of your internet connection, it may take a couple of minutes to load the first time. *)

"Passages IV" - Charcoal and acrylic by Elena Peteva. Now in the permanent collection of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. I fell in love with it, had my chance to acquire, vacillated, and by the time I decided ..... lost it. Both for its symbolism and my encounter with it as a love-and-life lesson on when heart and eye should out-vote the brain, there could be no other image more apropos.

"Love is the universal migraine" wrote Robert Graves in the poem "Symptoms of Love". And, like an actual migraine, it renders us paralyzed and wordless to describe: regardless of the stage (or state) of a "love connection"' we feel as though no one else has ever felt as we do. Since my first "migraine", poetry has been the palliative for its course. Exhilarated or despairing, elated or dumb-founded by an affaire de coeur, someone talented has expressed my feelings better, more vividly, eloquently, and passionately. My goal is to post one poem each day for a year as an exercise and meditation on the subject.

The poems come from a poetry collection accumulated over a life-time of marveling at the sometimes-madness-sometimes-misery of being in love but always always in awe of the mystery and hope, whether as the pursuer or the pursued.

In his poem "Amar" (To Love), which is posted here, Carlos Drummond de Andrade writes of the heart as being a bottomless reservoir of Love. He urges that we must continue to ladle it out, whether after a loss or when that Love has fallen on parched earth, because that's what we are meant to do - nay, we must do. No other poem speaks as much to me in encouraging that optimistic, hopeful view.

Part of my objective for the project is to see how re-reading, selecting, and commenting on so much "love poetry" would affect my own energy, spirit, receptivity, and capacity to love. It led - eventually- to a rumination about Love, which you can find here: “Talking About Love Is Like Dancing About Architecture” .

So, while you await the next lift-off, are already soaring or just barely crawling away from a crash, may these poems - by the gifted and the mad, the famous and the (somewhat) forgotten, spanning centuries and cultures - show you that your anguishes and ecstasies are shared and universal.

Intimations, Declarations, Persuasions, Celebrations, Separations, Desolation: these are the stages of a love affair, as characterized by Jon Stallworthy for his anthology of love poetry. I have followed the same protocol in tagging the poems here.

Harrison Tao
March 1, 2010

Since poets may be represented more than once, photos and biographical information will be only with the first posting of a poem by each. This site is quirky for navigating to a particular poet. They are listed in order of the number of their poems that I have selected.

Monday, March 8, 2010

Impromptu - Meng Chiao

The poets of the Tang Dynasty are often - and rightly - considered to be at the heart of Chinese poetry. Meng Chiao is part of that group, although his reputation ebbed and waned through subsequent centuries, partly because he wrote about the quotidian: his hard luck life. Three sons and a wife pre-deceased him and his performance in the exams only qualified him for lowly posts. Yet, those experiences of loss and poverty also make his poems more powerful.

Several hundred have survived, and of them, this is by far my favorite. Notice that he uses "lovely", not "beautiful", and it's significant (to me), because "loveliness" encompasses more than physical beauty, which makes men brain-dead. "Loveliness" is evident in a word, a touch, a laugh unguarded, and in a sureness that affirms and asserts who she is, gently but clearly. A woman with that combination is irresistible... and dangerous. Yet, he must advance - regardless of the risk - because the chance for evenings ad infinitum is surely worth it, no?
-----------------------------------------

Impromptu

Keep away from sharp swords,
Don't go near a lovely woman.
A sharp sword too close will wound your hand,
Woman's beauty too close will wound your life.
The danger of the road is not in the distance,
Ten yards is far enough to break a wheel.
The peril of love is not in loving too often,
A single evening can leave its wound in the soul.

Meng Chiao - 751-814 A.D. (Chinese -Tang Dynasty)

No comments:

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)