In the History of Our Love - Yehuda Amichai

With this selection, Amichai solidifies his lead as the most represented poet here.  And deservedly.  (Do "click" on his name on the left column to see why.  You'll agree and also see the biographical information on an amazing life.)   In this one, the analogy used in the last stanza to convey connectivity and isolation is just brilliant.  It takes Donne's "no man is an island" a step further, and that is just a great finish to the earlier lines' riff on permanence/impermanence.  There is also no doubt that Amichai is writing from deep experience.  It's the voice of a man who has loved well, loved deeply and loved completely.... and, thus, knows also the weight of loss.  What's striking to me about Amichai's love poetry is how powerfully and passionately he can write about both that state of grace that is being "in love" AND its aftermath.  (Sadly, just calling it a "state of grace" defines it as being a finite interval.  And do all "states of grace" inevitably have a "fall"? ) I envy that ability to express joy and sorrow equally well, as my own best writing is skewered towards the latter....
---------------------------------------------------------------

In the History of Our Love

                                    transl. from Hebrew by Ben and Barbara Harshaw

In the history of our love, always one is

A nomadic tribe, the other a nation on its own soil.

When we changed places, it was all over.

Time will pass us by, as landscapes

Move behind actors standing in their places

When they make a movie.  Even the words

Will pass by our lips, even the tears

Will pass by our eyes.  Time will pass

Every one in his place.

And in the geography of the rest of our lives,

Who will be an island and who a peninsula

Will become clear to each of us in the rest of our lives

In nights of love with others.

                                             Yehuda Amichai - Israeli

Doing A Filthy Pleasure Is - Gaius Petronius

A Roman Consul, courtier, and "fashion-advisor" to Emperor Nero, Gaius Petronius  (27- 66 C.E., also known as Petronius Arbiter) was also the writer to whom  "Satyricon" is attributed.  Petronius committed suicide rather than be executed for treason upon the accusation of political rivals.  

In light of the mores of the Roman society of the time, this poem is fascinating for its urging for restraint in hurrying the course of Love into the physical dimension.  It's a sensibility that pre-dates the Romantic love of the troubadors by over a 1000 years.  

I've included it because its message is timeless and, perhaps, even more relevant in this age of "hook-ups".  Just like the "slow food" movement, perhaps there should be a "slow-to-bed" initiative, where the imperative is less hormone driven - or, as the title of 1970 Student Health hand-book at U of Penn had it: "Sex is never an emergency" - so as to allow emotional intimacy to build ahead of - or at least apace with - the physical.  To know what will happen, yet to wait.... so that when morning breaks, it is truly a new dawn.  Sigh.

------------------------------------------------------

Doing a filthy pleasure is

                                    transl. from Latin by Ben Jonson

Doing, a filthy pleasure is, and short;

And done, we straight repent us of the sport:

Let us not then rush blindly on unto it,

Like lustful beasts, that only know to do it:

For lust will languish, and that heat decay.

But thus, thus, keeping endless holiday,

Let us together closely lie and kiss,

There is no labour, nor no shame in this;

This hath pleased, doth please, and long will please; never

Can this decay, but is beginning ever.

                                             Gaius Petronius - Roman

Explosion - Delmira Agustini

(Note: READ the poem FIRST, before this commentary.) Delmira Agustini (1887 - 1914)... She was a rising poet in Uruguay, known for original imagery while exhibiting a strong command of traditional Spanish meters and forms, when she died at the age of 27.  The circumstances of her death increased her popularity.  Married but a few weeks, she had separated from her husband but agreed to see him one last time. She was found dead with him the next morning in a short-time hotel in Montevideo, the victim of a murder-suicide.  It gives this selection poignancy to contrast the exuberance and happiness at finding Love with its outcome.  And a commentary on the dark side of the passion.  (Check out this poem from an earlier posting, which has some marvelous lines about that flip side - loss - of love.  But without a murderous rage directed at the love object.)  

------------------------------------------------------------

Explosion

                               transl. from Spanish by Perry Higman

If life is love , blessed be it!

I want more life to love!  Today I feel

a thousand years of ideas are worth nothing

next to one azure minute of feeling.

My heart was dying, sad and slow….

Now it blooms in light like a flower of Phoebus:

Life bursts like a violent sea

where the hand of love strikes its blow!

Today my melancholy, with broken wings

went out into the night, sad, cold;

like an old mark of sorrow

it dissolves in distant shadows….

My whole life laughs, kisses, sings!

My whole life is a mouth in bloom!

                                             Delmira Augustinin - Uruguay

Homage To Sextus Propertius - Ezra Pound

Another by Ezra Pound (see other for bio info) and possibly my favorite of all of his poems, perhaps because of its accessibility and stylistic departure from his best known.  Sextus Propertius was a Roman poet generally regarded for his elegies, of which close to one hundred survive.  They chronicle a love affair with an older woman who captured - and held - his heart early on and, it seems, until her death. 


I read this during my college years and the verse beginning with "Fool who would set a term to love's madness..." has always set the standard for expressing the absolute absurdity - and folly - of trying to control the object, arc, and/or duration of a love affair.  "The heart has its reasons, of which Reason knows nothing about", wrote Pascal, and we seem to forget that all the time.  Or how artificial barriers are just plain foolhardy and counter-productive to what our hearts want most: to connect.
----------------------------------------------
-->

Homage to Sextus Propertius

                                            

While our fates twine together,

sate we our eyes with love;

For long night comes upon you

and a day when no day returns.

Let the gods lay chains upon us

so that no day shall unbind them.

Fool who would set a term to love's madness

For the sun shall drive with black horses,

earth shall bring wheat from barley,

The flood shall move toward the fountain

Ere love know moderations,

The fish shall swim in dry streams.

No, now while it may be, let not the fruit of life cease.

Dry wreaths drop their petals,

their stalks are woven in baskets,

To-day we take the great breath of lovers,

to-morrow fate shuts us in.

Though you give all your kisses

you give but few.

Nor can I shift my pains to other,

Hers will I be dead,

If she confer such nights upon me,

long is my life, long in years,

If she give me many,

God am I for the time.

                                         

                                                      Ezra Pound - American

Sonnet 4 - Ah when you drift hover - Berryman

As mentioned in earlier post, John Berryman's (1914 - 1972) 115 sonnets were an accounting of the course of a love affair with a married woman.  By this one's number, it's at the beginning. 

It's not an "easy" poem after the first four lines.... but what first four lines they are!  They alone are worth it.  Who hasn't felt so enraptured, connected and complete that nothing else that moment matters - not life, not wondering "...the point of life..."!  Those lines are the gold-standard for describing the drug-like "high" of kissing a lover.  (There.  Now I've made you, dear reader - AND myself! - entirely self-conscious about the next time we kiss.   Yes, even each other!)  

The rest of the sonnet requires a bit more "work" for full appreciation, particularly with the classical references.  (I wrestled with whether to post this poem at all because of that.)  

However, as quick help, "swine-enchanted lover" is a reference to the Odyssey and Circe, the enchantress who turned Odysseus' crew into animals, notably pigs.  (Hmm.... is this where it comes from that women call men "pigs"?)  "Melpomene" was one of  the 9 Muses, the goddesses of dance, music, and song, in Greek mythology.  Each "covered" one area in the arts, and Melpomene was the Muse of tragedy.  "Erato", on the other hand, was the Muse of erotic poetry....so we know where Berryman was headed (if not already there).  He was a lustful, lively - and tormented - man who, like his father, eventually committed suicide (click on his name above for a link to a brief bio).  It's good to have in this poem - and many others - a record of his joy.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Sonnet 4 – Ah when you drift hover

Ah when you drift hover before you kiss

More your mouth yours now, lips grow more to mine

Teeth click, suddenly your tongue like a mulled wine

Slides fire, -- I wonder what the point of life is.

Do, down this night when I adore you, Lise,

So I forsake the blest assistant shine

Of deep-laid maps I made for summits, swine-

enchanted lover, loafing in the abyss?

Loaf hardly, while my nerves dance, while the gale

Moans like your hair down here.  But I lie still.

Strengthless and smiling under a maenad rule.

Whose limbs worked once, whose imagination’s grail

Many or some would nourish, must now I fill

My strength with desire, my cup with your tongue,

          no more Melpomene’s but Erato’s fool?...

                                                      John Berryman

Untitled

Sulpicia, a Roman poetess from the 1st century BCE, is only known by her name and a handful of poems included with Tibullus’.  I am including this one for two reasons: the mid-line sentence that starts “Let my joy...”. And the last sentence, which amuses because, thanks to the word chosen by the translator, it connects with a famous line from a Seinfeld episode, thus making a connection across two thousand years, where how “worthiness” in a lover is measured a certain way.  (It’s also interesting because sponges WERE used for contraception in the ancient world!)  The reader will have to know American TV from a certain period to get the reference.


Untitled
                                 
                   transl. By Aliki and Willis Barnstone
                         
At last love has come.  I would be more ashamed
  to hide it in cloth than leave it naked.
I prayed to the Muse and won.  Venus dropped him
  in my arms, doing for me what she
Had promised.  Let my joy be told, let those
  who have none tell it in a story.
Personally, I would never send off words
  in sealed tablets for none to read.
I delight in sinning and hate to compose a mask
  for gossip.  We met.  We are both worthy.

                                                                     Sulpicia - 1st. Cent. BCE

Sonnets - Actualities - I - e.e. cummings

 The fifth selection from cummings.  I have a concern that it may be harder to understand by someone whose first language isn't English, but I believe in "stretching" when it comes to reading.  It's not a BIG poem, but one that captures well that state of anticipation waiting for the appearance of the loved one.  Check out the John Berryman Sonnet 23: it's another take on that "in waiting" state, which sometimes is more exciting than what happens after the arrival.  Everything is perfect when waiting, yet we have all had the experience of the actual time together be the total opposite.....   This one also made it here because it has lines describing the physical effect on the heartbeat created by the  presence of one's love.   Just like  the Inuit language is supposed to have 20 or more words for snow,   I am intrigued by how many different ways poets describe a heart beat in love. There should be one more than there are for describing a heart in pain....
--------------------------------------------------------
Sonnets – Actualities

                        I

when my love comes to see me it’s

just a little like music,  a

little more like curving colour (say

orange)

                 against silence, or darkness……….

the coming of my love emits

a wonderful smell in my mind,

you should see when I turn to find

her how my least heart-beat becomes less.

And then all her beauty is a vise

whose stilling lips murder suddenly me,

but of my corpse the tool her smile makes something

suddenly luminous and precise
-- and then we are I and She ………

what is that the hurdy-gurdy’s playing

                                                                     e.e. cummings - American

Sonnet LXIX - 100 Sonnets of Love - Pablo Neruda

Regardless, of how this poem arrives on your physical (or virtual) doorstep - by dogsled, singing messenger,  snail-mail, spam, or even in a blog you stumble upon, it should be taken very, very seriously as a reminder that life is short and The Beatles had it almost right: Love may not be all you need, but without it, what is the rest?  And if it arrives by carrier pigeon with a flash-drive attached to a leg or delivered by Federal Express, you would be a fool NOT to run - not walk - to the person who sent it.  How much more could you ask for from someone IF their other actions match the ardor, passion, and devotion in these words???

------------------------------------
Sonnet LXIX
                                          transl. - Stephen Tapscott

Maybe nothingness is to be without your presence,
without you moving, slicing the noon
like a blue flower, without you walking
later through the fog and the cobbles,

without the light you carry in your hand,
golden, which maybe others will not see,
which maybe no one knew was growing
like the red beginnings of a rose.

In short, without your presence: without your coming
suddenly, incitingly, to know my life,
gust of a rosebush, wheat of wind:

since then I am because you are,
since then you are, I am, we are,
and through love I will be, you will be, we’ll be.

                                                                                              Pablo Neruda

Sonnet LXVI - I do not love you - Pablo Neruda

As promised, another from Neruda's 100 Love Sonnets.  I wish you could read it in Spanish: some of the passion is diluted in translation, as I hold firmly that certain love-poetry can only be "pulled off" in their origin.  This one is a declaration of love that speaks true, as it acknowledges that when we love someone, we at once see him/her perfectly well AND, simultaneously, not at all, in order to love them and their shortcomings.  (If YOU are loved THAT well, pay attention!)
------------------
Sonnet LXVI
                                         transl. by Stephen Trascott

I do not love you – except because I love you;
I go from loving to not loving you,
from waiting to not waiting for you
my heart moves from the cold into

the fire. I love you only because it’s you
I love; I hate you no end, and hating you
bend to you, and the measure of my changing love for you
is that I do not see you but love you

blindly. Maybe the January light will comsume
my heart with its cruel
ray, stealing my key to true

calm. In this part of the story I am the one who
dies, the only one, and I will die of love because I love you
because I love you, Love, in fire and in blood.

                                                                                         Pablo Neruda

Wild Oats

This is the fifth poem by Larkin in this anthology and it’s one that straddles my self-imposed/copied categories.  One could call it an  “Intimations” poem as much as a “Separations” or “Desolations” one.  It really doesn’t fit neatly in any, but it belongs in this anthology precisely because it mirrors real life: sometimes it’s just impossible to categorize a relationship (or its place) in the “love relationship pantheon”.  I’ve “liked” it because of how compresses the whole arc of a seven year into just a few lines, but the sparseness of details does not deter one from absolutely “getting” what it was to the writer.  There is a sadness in how desultory it was or meaningful (or not) to him.  He isn’t quite a cad but certainly not a noble soul.  And he doesn’t seem to have learned anything from the years it took of his (and her) life, even while “reflecting” through this account of the relationship.  It leaves me both sad for him and wondering how many of us have had his kind of experience. 

BY PHILIP LARKIN

About twenty years ago

Two girls came in where I worked—

A bosomy English rose

And her friend in specs I could talk to.   

Faces in those days sparked

The whole shooting-match off, and I doubt   

If ever one had like hers:

But it was the friend I took out,

And in seven years after that   

Wrote over four hundred letters,   

Gave a ten-guinea ring

I got back in the end, and met   

At numerous cathedral cities   

Unknown to the clergy. I believe

I met beautiful twice. She was trying   

Both times (so I thought) not to laugh.

Parting, after about five

Rehearsals, was an agreement   

That I was too selfish, withdrawn,   

And easily bored to love.

Well, useful to get that learnt.   

In my wallet are still two snaps

Of bosomy rose with fur gloves on.   

Unlucky charms, perhaps.

Words for the Wind

This is the sixth of Roethke’s poems included here and one of his great love poems—lush, sensual, and mystical.  I wrestled with its inclusion because of thelength, but it’s worth taking the time to read.  And reread because the imagery is so rich and - sometimes - so rewiring of common words together for something fresh, that it takes some time and effort to fully appreciate what he has done. It’s a sustained lyric meditation on the subject.  The ending has always struck me as quintessential Roethke. Love is not simply admiration or desire; it’s a way of discovering oneself in another consciousness.

So, get a glass of your favorite beverage for reading poetry, get comfortable, and enjoy!  

 WORDS FOR THE WIND

                                          Theodore Roethke 

1

Love, love, a lily's my care,
She's sweeter than a tree.
Loving, I use the air
Most lovingly: I breathe;
Mad in the wind I wear
Myself as I should be,
All's even with the odd,
My brother the vine is glad.

Are flower and seed the same?
What do the great dead say?
Sweet Phoebe, she's my theme:
She sways whenever I sway.
"O love me while I am,
You green thing in my way!"
I cried, and the birds came down
And made my song their own.

Motion can keep me still:
She kissed me out of thought
As a lovely substance will;
She wandered; I did not:
I stayed, and light fell
Across her pulsing throat;
I stared, and a garden stone
Slowly became the moon.

The shallow stream runs slack;
The wind creaks slowly by;
Out of a nestling's beak
Comes a tremulous cry
I cannot answer back;
A shape from deep in the eye 
That woman I saw in a stone 
Keeps pace when I walk alone.

2

The sun declares the earth;
The stones leap in the stream;
On a wide plain, beyond
The far stretch of a dream,
A field breaks like the sea;
The wind's white with her name,
And I walk with the wind.

The dove's my will today.
She sways, half in the sun:
Rose, easy on a stem,
One with the sighing vine,
One to be merry with,
And pleased to meet the moon.
She likes wherever I am.

Passion's enough to give
Shape to a random joy:
I cry delight: I know
The root, the core of a cry.
Swan-heart, arbutus-calm,
She moves when time is shy:
Love has a thing to do.

A fair thing grows more fair;
The green, the springing green
Makes an intenser day
Under the rising moon;
I smile, no mineral man;
I bear, but not alone,
The burden of this joy.

3

Under a southern wind,
The birds and fishes move
North, in a single stream;
The sharp stars swing around;
I get a step beyond
The wind, and there I am,
I'm odd and full of love.

Wisdom, where is it found? 
Those who embrace, believe.
Whatever was, still is,
Says a song tied to a tree.
Below, on the ferny ground,
In rivery air, at ease,
I walk with my true love.

What time's my heart? I care.
I cherish what I have
Had of the temporal:
I am no longer young
But the winds and waters are;
What falls away will fall;
All things bring me to love.

4

The breath of a long root,
The shy perimeter
Of the unfolding rose,
The green, the altered leaf,
The oyster's weeping foot,
And the incipient star 
Are part of what she is.
She wakes the ends of life.

Being myself, I sing
The soul's immediate joy.
Light, light, where's my repose?
A wind wreathes round a tree.
A thing is done: a thing
Body and spirit know
When I do what she does:
Creaturely creature, she! 

I kiss her moving mouth,
Her swart hilarious skin;
She breaks my breath in half;
She frolicks like a beast;
And I dance round and round,
A fond and foolish man,
And see and suffer myself
In another being, at last.

1958

Dylan Thomas, the great Welsh poet of the mid-20th century, is both notorious (for his drinking and life-style) and appropriately admired for the lyrical, astoundingly beautiful and intensely emotional poetry that captured mid-20th century Americans through his public readings. He was the modern emobdiment of the "tortured Romantic poet".  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.) 

Song speaks to that most fundamental of human drives for our short span here: to connect with, 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.

I Am Much Too Alone In This World

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) almost exactly straddles the 19th and 20th century, dying of leukemia at age 51 in Switzerland, though his best literary years were in Paris (1902-1914) where, for a time, he was Rodin's secretary(!).  Both a poet and a novelist, he was admired by his contemporaries but not broadly popularized until after his death.  His reputation has grown over time, his lyrical style, of which this selection is not a prime example, striking. 

For me, this poem captures that yearning to know and be known - authentically, purely - that should be at the start of every love.  It's a manifesto of good intentions that, hopefully, can be carried out through the right balancing of risk/self-protection.  It's also a plea that, one hopes, is shared by the love object and to the same degree.  

(I chose this oil of him vs. a photograph since this is more flattering.  By far.)

I am much too alone


I am much too alone in this world, yet not alone
enough
to truly consecrate the hour.
I am much too small in this world, yet not small
enough
to be to you just object and thing,
dark and smart.
I want my free will and want it accompanying
the path which leads to action;
and want during times that beg questions,
where something is up,
to be among those in the know,
or else be alone.

I want to mirror your image to its fullest perfection,
never be blind or too old
to uphold your weighty wavering reflection.
I want to unfold.
Nowhere I wish to stay crooked, bent;
for there I would be dishonest, untrue.
I want my conscience to be
true before you;
want to describe myself like a picture I observed
for a long time, one close up,
like a new word I learned and embraced,
like the everyday jug,
like my mother's face,
like a ship that carried me along
through the deadliest storm.

Let's invite something new
by unifying our silences;
if, then and there, we advance,
we'll know it soon enough.

                                                                   Rainer Maria Rilke (transl. by Annemarie S.Kilder)

Sonnet XIV - Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Another poet that needs little introduction, Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806 - 1861), became one of the most popular English poets of the Victorian Era, to the point of being considered for the Poet Laureate post (which went to Tennyson...).  Self-schooled in the classics and from a family that fell from wealth into genteel middle-class after financial set-backs, she also had a medical afflictions that made her an invalid and recluse for a time.  Death by drowning of a beloved brother did not help her emotional state.  Almost 40 when she met Robert Browning, he was the love of her life and the inspiration for "Sonnets from the Portuguese", which cemented her fame and popularity.  Her poems on the themes of social injustice and women's roles were also well-received, though her popularity declined after her death.  Her reputation is now mostly based on the love sonnets.  Compare and contrast this one to the one from Shakespeare (yesterday's post).  His is on "eternal love"; hers on what makes it eternal.  To me, it's the best answer for those who keep asking "Why do you love me?" Or "What do you love about me?".  It's always a mystery that defies dissection, a dissection that shouldn't be attempted in the first place!
---------------------------------------------------
Sonnet XIV

If thou must love me, let it be for nought
Except for love’s sake only. Do not say
“I love her for her smile – her look- her way
Of speaking gently, - for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day” –
For these things in themselves, Beloved, may
Be changed, or change for thee, - and love so wrought,
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity’s wiping my cheeks dry, -
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
But love me for love’s sake, that evermore
Thou mayst love on, through love’s eternity.

                                                                                   Elizabeth Barrett Browning - English

Sonnet LV - Shakespeare

(Is it REALLY necessary that Shakespeare needs an introduction??  By me???  I didn't think so!)  Here, after 100+ poems by others, the first one by Shakespeare.  "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" (Sonnet XVIII) is better known, but I like this one for its topic.  Rather than praising her beauty , he speaks to the immortality of his love for her through the existence of the poem.  What a gift!
----------------------------------------
Sonnet LV

Not marble nor the gilded monuments
Of princes shall outlive this pow’rful rhyme;
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone, besmeared with sluttish time.
When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
And broils root out the work of masonry,
Nor Mars his sword nor war’s quick fire shall burn
The living record of your memory.
‘Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity
Shall you pace forth; our praise shall still find room
Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the ending doom.
So, till the judgment that yourself arise
You live in this, and dwell in lovers’ eyes.


                                                                                 William Shakespeare - English

A short poem by 'Unsuri ( ? - 1039/1040), from Persia (now Iran - mostly), in the ruba'i form (four-line stanza). By his time, the poetry that had emerged there had shed some of the Arab influences and both the imagery and subjects contained more from the songs from Central Asia.  Persian poetry also had more references to gardens and fruits, which was a bit missing from desert Arab writings. 'Unsuri was named "Lord of the Poets" by Sultan Mahmud, in whose court he served.  One of his duties was to evaluate the talent of any poets who wished to be part of the royal entourage.  (A great gig, if you ask me: to be gate-keeper against potential rivals!)  In this poem, I think there is a little oddness in the translation - not that I read Persian! - because I read the meaning as being that "she", being his love, is the one that "takes" those three things (grief, tears, fancy) from him.  Do you agree?
------------------------------
Untitled

Three things have modeled themselves on three of yours –
Rose on cheek, grape on lip, beauty on face.
Three things each year are taken from three of mine –

Grief from heart, tears from cheek, fancy from eye.

                                                                     Abdul Qasin Hasan Unsuri - Persian (Tajik)

Level - John Koethe

John Koethe (1945 - ), educated at Princeton and Harvard, teaches currently in the Midwest, I think at U of Winsconsin.)  While we are almost contemporaries - he's just a bit older - I am not familiar with his writing, though he is not an unknown and has been recognized with fellowships and prizes.  His bio (click on his name) is a little sparse, but at least he has one on the Poetry Foundation website.  (Aside: one of my pet peeves about poetry - and visual arts - is how critics often interfere with a reader/viewer's experience by either interpreting too much and/or making it about HIS / HER experience and biases through what they write.  A case in point is the bio on Koethe in the "Innisfree Poetry Journal" from which come this quote:  "In language that is often discursive, often plangent, always mesmeric in its lyricism...".  Now, I think I have a pretty good vocabulary, but I had to look up "plangent"!  Oh, wait.  It means ".. lamenting, often melancholy" and used chiefly in poetry/literature.  Hmm....  Next time academics and critics bemoan the state of poetry in this society, they might consider NOT USING WORDS THAT FURTHER SEPARATE THEM FROM A LARGER AUDIENCE!!! 
----------------------------------
Level

                                 A promise of so much to that is to come
                                 Extracted, accepted gladly
                                 But within its narrow limits
                                                               John Ashberry

Eventually, I’d hoped, I would please you.
I would call you the right names,
Bend with your gestures, remember your actions,
Extracting them gladly, but within real limits.

I see I was wrong. Shall I find you different?
Easy, supple, and without pain?
Or is energy part of the music?
I try. I am trying to ask you –

O the noises that cannot be touched!
The faces have passed me like a brown dream

For how can they change?
Always unbearably tender, and constant,
Like a house that is tender and constant.

You are like other people. There is
I suppose, no reason to want you
Unless desire itself is a reason, drawing us
Out of our kindness, leaving us terrified

Peace. Beauty, we know,
Is the center of fear, hammering,
Holding in a loose ring your purposeful
Dream – and you see them

Looking painfully into your face, though you know
They will never come back in the same way.

John Koethe

The Rules of Courtly Love - Andreas Cappelanus

Since the posting from yesterday was from the era of the troubadours in medieval Europe (1000 - 1400, somewhat arbitrarily) when ideas about Courtly Love were being established, today's is the list of those rules, as related by Andreas Cappelanus sometime around 1184 - 1186.  He was probably a chaplain in the court of Eleanor of Aquitaine - then married to the French king, but better known as the wife of Henry II of England and father of Richard the Lion-hearted.  These 31 rules (and a second set) were in his book "The Art of Courtly Love", written as a letter to instruct a young man on who/how to love.  It's worth reading the Wikipedia entry  about him and this concept since.  (It's particularly fascinating to see the class distinctions: these rules did not apply to lower-class girls, who could be used - even raped - without a second thought.)  It shouldn't be a surprise that many of the observations below are still held today (and true): they are, after all, the beliefs that influence later writers and western society.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The Rules of Love

1. Marriage is no excuse for not loving.
2. He who is not jealous can not love.
3. No one can be bound by two loves.
4. Love is always growing or diminishing.
5. It is not good for one lover to take anything against the will of the other.
6. A male cannot love until he has fully reached puberty.
7. Two years of mourning for a dead lover are prescribed for surviving lovers.
8. No one should be deprived of love without a valid reason.
9. No one can love who is not driven to do so by the power of love.
10. Love always departs from the dwelling place of avarice.
11. It is not proper to love one whom one would be ashamed to marry.
12. The true lover never desires the embraces of any save his lover.
13. Love rarely lasts when it is revealed.
14. An easy attainment makes love contemptible; a difficult one
makes it more dear.
15. Every lover turns pale in the presence of his beloved.
16. When a lover suddenly has sight of his beloved, his heart beats wildly.
17. A new love expels an old one.
18. Moral integrity alone makes one worthy of love.
19. If love diminishes, it quickly leaves and rarely revives.
20. A lover is always fearful.
21. True jealousy always increases the effects of love.
22. If a lover suspects another, jealousy and the efects of love increase.
23. He who is vexed by the thoughts of love eats little and seldom sleeps.
24. Every action of a lover ends in the thought of his beloved.
25. The true lover believes only that which he thinks will please his beloved.
26. Love can deny nothing to love.
27. A lover can never have enough of the embraces of his beloved.
28. The slightest suspicion incites the lover to suspect the worse of his beloved.
29. He who suffers from an excess of passion is not suited to love.
30. The true lover is continuously obsessed with the image of his beloved.
31. Nothing prevents a woman from being loved by two men, or a man
from being loved by two women.