Love Poetry Out Loud (2 page)

After all, if you gotta use words, you might as well use good ones.

—Robert Alden Rubin

“Anyone can be passionate, but it takes real lovers to be silly.”

—Rose Franken

FIGURES—OF SPEECH AND OTHERWISE

Why can't poets just say what they mean? Every harried student of literature has probably wondered why they insist on employing metaphors, similes, and other elaborate figures of speech when plain English would do just fine. Maybe it's because playing with words and images is fun, for one thing. And, for another, sometimes plain English won't, in fact, “do”—sometimes the imagination must be summoned up by outrageous images
.

Billy Collins

You are the bread and the knife
,

The crystal goblet and the wine …

— Jacques Crickillon

Y
ou are the bread and the knife,

the crystal goblet and the wine.

You are the dew on the morning grass

and the burning wheel of the sun.

You are the white apron of the baker

and the marsh birds suddenly in flight.

However, you are not the wind in the orchard,

the plums on the counter,

or the house of cards.

And you are certainly not the pine-scented air.

There is just no way you are the pine-scented air.

It is possible that you are the fish under the bridge,

maybe even the pigeon on the general's head,

but you are not even close

to being the field of cornflowers at dusk.

And a quick look in the mirror will show

that you are neither the boots in the corner

nor the boat asleep in its boathouse.

It might interest you to know,

speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world,

that I am the sound of rain on the roof.

I also happen to be the shooting star,

the evening paper blowing down an alley,

and the basket of chestnuts on the kitchen table.

I am also the moon in the trees

and the blind woman's tea cup.

But don't worry, I am not the bread and the knife.

You are still the bread and the knife.

You will always be the bread and the knife,

not to mention the crystal goblet and — somehow — the wine.

 

Variations on a Theme

Renaissance love poetry, notably the fourteenth-century Italian love sonnets of Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch), often likened qualities of the beloved to idealized forms from nature and classical culture—skin became ivory, hair became gold wire, and so forth. Ever since, poets have been having fun at old Petrarch's expense. So does the American poet Billy Collins, in this fond catalog of his love's virtues
.

Litany =
A long prayer of entreaties or a repetitive chant or list; here, a litany of metaphors
.

Jacques Crickillon =
Belgian poet and writer (b. 1940)
.

Plentiful imagery =
Metaphor often draws a logical parallel between two distinctly different things and provides another way of seeing them
.

 

Animal Love

“You're such an animal!” one lover says to another. Ah, but what kind of animal? Theodore Roethke uses the figurative device of simile to offer some possible answers
.

Worm =
Archaic synonym for snake
.

Theodore Roethke

Most mammals like caresses, in the sense in which we usually take the word, whereas other creatures, even tame snakes, prefer giving to receiving them
.

— From a natural-history book

T
he pensive gnu, the staid aardvark,

Accept caresses in the dark;

The bear, equipped with paw and snout,

Would rather take than dish it out.

But snakes, both poisonous and garter,

In love are never known to barter;

The worm, though dank, is sensitive:

His noble nature bids him
give
.

But you, my dearest, have a soul

Encompassing fish, flesh, and fowl.

When amorous arts we would pursue,

You can, with pleasure, bill
or
coo.

You are, in truth, one in a million,

At once mammalian and reptilian.

 

NONSENSE AND SENSIBILITY

Love poetry isn't usually kid stuff. Here are two verses, one written for general audiences and one that sounds as if it were. But, while English poet Lewis Carroll's nonsense from
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
is unlikely to provoke awkward questions from most ten-year-olds, the same cannot be said of Australian A. D. Hope's nursery rhyme for grownups
.

Lewis Carroll

S
he's all my fancy painted him

(I make no idle boast);

If he or you had lost a limb,

Which would have suffered most?

He said that you had been to her,

And seen me here before:

But, in another character

She was the same of yore.

There was not one that spoke to us,

Of all that thronged the street;

So he sadly got into a 'bus,

And pattered with his feet.

They told me you had been to her,

And mentioned me to him;

She gave me a good character,

But said I could not swim.

He sent them word I had not gone

(We know it to be true);

If she should push the matter on,

What would become of you?

I gave her one, they gave him two,

You gave us three or more;

They all returned from him to you,

Though they were mine before.

If I or she should chance to be

Involved in this affair,

He trusts to you to set them free,

Exactly as we were.

My notion was that you had been

(Before she had this fit)

An obstacle that came between

Him, and ourselves, and it.

Don't let him know she likes them best,

For this must ever be

A secret, kept from all the rest

Between yourself and me.

 

A good character =
A favorable character reference
.

 

Zero Sum

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson's pen name, Lewis Carroll, derives from Latinized versions of his first and middle names, reversed. This poem's full of reversals, too. Dodgson made his living teaching the logic of mathematics, but became famous as the author of one of the English-speaking world's most popular nonsense stories. In Alice, part of the poem (which reads like a secret message between lovers) becomes a key piece of evidence in the trial of the Knave of Hearts. It's nonsense, though: don't try too hard to puzzle out who “you,” “I,” “we, “and “they” are. With mathematical precision, all its contradictions and oppositions equal … zero
.

Gave him two =
The King of Hearts, judge in the trial, determines that this refers to missing tarts the Knave is alleged to have stolen
.

A. D. Hope

T
he Lingam and the Yoni

Are walking hand in glove,

O are you listening, honey?

I hear my honey-love.

The He and She our movers

What is it they discuss?

Is it the talk of Lovers?

And do they speak of us?

I hear their high palaver—

O tell me what they say!

The talk goes on for ever

So deep in love are they;

So deep in thought, debating

The suburb and the street;

Time-payment calculating

Upon the bedroom suite.

But ours is long division

By love's arithmetic,

Until they make provision

To buy a box of brick,

A box that makes her prisoner,

That he must slave to win

To do the Lingam honour,

To keep the Yoni in.

The mortgage on tomorrow?

The haemorrhage of rent?

Against the heart they borrow

At five or six per cent.

The heart has bought fulfilment

Which yet their mouths defer

Until the last instalment

Upon the furniture.

No Lingam for her money

Can make up youth's arrears:

His layby on the Yoni

Will not be paid in years.

And they, who keep this tally,

They count what they destroy;

While, in its secret valley

Withers the herb of joy.

 

Tantric Tempers

Although they sound like something out of Dr. Seuss, Lingam and Yoni come from ancient Sanskrit and the worship of the Indian deities Shiva and Shakti. Together these male and female forces of nature cancel each other out and add up to everything that exists, a mathematical relationship that Professor Dodgson would recognize, but that might make him blush. Here, A. D. Hope presents them as a formula for domestic disaster
.

Lingam =
The phallic (male) essence that symbolizes the god Shiva
.

Yoni =
The vulvar (female) essence that symbolizes the goddess Shakti
.

Arrears =
Debt, with a sprinkling of double entendre
.

Layby =
Payment on time, but also suggestive
.

 

THE BIG APPLE OF MY EYE

Ah, city life! New York, New York! Center of romance, of culture, of sophistication, of fine restaurants, of brilliant people, of dazzling and varied entertainments! Of the occasional cheap date!

 

Diminution

Notice that everything's small in this poem, including both inanimate (luncheon-ette) and animate (usher-ette) objects. The latter might object to such objectification
.

Petite chérie =
Little darling
.

Tangerine =
Originally a Tangerine Orange (from Tangiers) before the name was shortened
.

Le coup de grâce =
The death blow
.

Demitasse =
Small cup
.

Serviette =
Napkin
.

Weazened =
Shriveled
.

John Updike

A
h, come with me,

Petite chérie
,

And we shall rather happy be.

I know a modest luncheonette

Where, for a little, one can get

A choplet, baby lima beans,

And, segmented, two tangerines.

Le coup de grâce
,

My petty lass,

Will be a demi-demitasse

Within a serviette conveyed

By weazened waiters, underpaid,

Who mincingly might grant us spoons

While a combo tinkles trivial tunes.

Ah, with me come,

Ma mini-femme
,

And I shall say I love you some.

Ogden Nash

C
ome live with me and be my love

And we will all the pleasures prove

Of a marriage conducted with economy

In the Twentieth Century Anno Donomy.

We'll live in a dear little walk-up flat

With practically room to swing a cat

And a potted cactus to give it hauteur

And a bathtub equipped with dark brown water.

We'll eat, without undue discouragement,

Foods low in cost but high in nouragement

And quaff with pleasure, while chatting wittily,

The peculiar wine of Little Italy.

We'll remind each other it's smart to be thrifty

And buy our clothes for something-fifty.

We'll stand in line on holidays

For seats at unpopular matinees.

For every Sunday we'll have a lark

And take a walk in Central Park.

And one of these days not too remote

I'll probably up and cut your throat.

 

The Passionate Cheapskate to His Love

Like John Updike (and Sir Walter Raleigh on
page 54
). Ogden Nash can't resist playing off the opening of a famous love poem by Christopher Marlowe, “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” (see
Poetry Out Loud),
that invites a young lady to enjoy the simple pleasures of rural life. Apparently the pleasures of simplicity ain't all they're cracked up to be
.