A Year of Love Poetry, Day-by-Day

(*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, June 28, 2010

Dylan Thomas, the great Welsh poet of the mid-20th century, is both notorious (for his drinking and life-style) and appropriately admired for his lyrical, astoundingly beautiful and intensely emotional poetry that captured mid-20th century Americans through his theatrical public readings. One can't be a lover/reader of poetry in English without exploring his work: it’d be like going to Florence and never seeing the sculpture of David or Scotland and never visiting a distillery. My personal favorite is "Poem in October", which I reread on my birthday every year as it is "about" his own 30th birthday.) He was the modern emobdiment of the "tortured Romantic poet".

Song speaks to that most fundamental of human needs during our short span here: to be known deeply and accurately by another. What other chance do we have, for certain? We come alone from the blackness of the unknown and we leave alone for the same. Instead of spending our energy and imagination fabricating “…The undiscover’d country from whose bourn / no traveller returns..”, as Shakespeare had Hamlet state, spend it in this life knowing - and be known - even by just *one* person.

Song is a plea, an admonition and a reminder of that to those who have said “Never again!” after savagings of their heart. It says one must be willing - and fearless - in allowing oneself to be vulnerable and truly expose because closing up cheats us from seeing and be seen, fully love and be loved by another human being... who is just as afraid, frail, and hurt as we are..

Song

Dylan Thomas (1914 - 1953)

Love me, not as the dreaming nurses

My falling lungs, nor as the cypress

In his age the lass’s clay.

Love me and lift your mask.

Love me, not as the girls of heaven

their airy lovers, not the mermaiden

Her salty lovers in the sea.

Love me and lift your mask.

Love me, as the ruffling pigeon

The tops of trees, nor as the legion

Of the gulls the lip of waves.

Love me and lift your mask.

Love me, as loves the mole his darkness

And the timid Dee the tigress:

Hate and love be your two loves.

Love me and lift your mask.

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