Love Poetry Out Loud (5 page)

 

Procreationism

In this poem, the poet acts as a medium, channeling the spirit of love. Love, it turns out, is something of a philosopher, and love's philosophy of procreationism is fairly straightforward: Let's you and me get together
.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

T
he fountains mingle with the river

And the rivers with the ocean,

The winds of heaven mix for ever

With a sweet emotion;

Nothing in the world is single,

All things by a law divine

In one another's being mingle —

Why not I with thine?

See the mountains kiss high heaven,

And the waves clasp one another;

No sister-flower would be forgiven

If it disdain'd its brother:

And the sunlight clasps the earth,

And the moon beams kiss the sea —

What are all these kissings worth,

If thou kiss not me?

Seamus Heaney

(for Marie)

L
ove, I shall perfect for you the child

Who diligently potters in my brain

Digging with heavy spade till sods were piled

Or puddling through muck in a deep drain.

Yearly I would sow my yard-long garden.

I'd strip a layer of sods to build the wall

That was to keep out sow and pecking hen.

Yearly, admitting these, the sods would fall.

Or in the sucking clabber I would splash

Delightedly and dam the flowing drain

But always my bastions of clay and mush

Would burst before the rising autumn rain.

Love, you shall perfect for me this child

Whose small imperfect limits would keep breaking:

Within new limits now, arrange the world

And square the circle: four walls and a ring.

 

Child's Play

“When I was a child,” Saint Paul wrote to the Christians of Corinth, “I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” For some people, though, putting away childish things is not the mark of adulthood. That seems to be the case for Seamus Heaney, for whom the spirit of that child informs the married man's love
.

Sods =
Chunks of peat
.

Clabber =
Of the consistency of curdled milk
.

Square the circle =
An ancient mathematical problem that has come to mean attempting the impossible
.

 

“Lord, what fools these mortals be!”

—Shakespeare,
A Midsummer Night's Dream

DOMESTIC GODDESSES

Love poets have traditionally depicted women as the “weaker vessel”—as the passive recipients or objects of love. Today, reading the old poems, we ask ourselves
, What on earth were they thinking?
It was doubtless never true in the first place, and it's certainly not true of the vessels in the next two poems
.

 

Pomegranate =
A ripe fruit. Compare this, and the beginning of Parrish's poem, to the language of the Song of Songs (
page 88
)
.

Ritah Parrish

M
y love is deep and penetrating. Subterranean.

Large, thick, slow, deliberate, vulgar, low, archetypal, animalistic.

Ripe for splitting open, to be savored, enjoyed.

I am a pomegranate.

And you.

You are everything that ever was

And everything that ever shall be.

I could pray to you.

And, so it begins.

You take me in your arms and fold me like a fan.

You lead me about the room.

My body is pliant, supple.

Your hands stretch wide across my belly, self-assured.

Even your fingers are confident.

We are groveling.

Grinding.

Sinking deeper into it.

Slathering each other with it.

And, then I feel it.

It is traveling through my bowels

Like a vengeful eggplant on fire,

Violently pushing and gurgling its way through my lower intestine.

Mocking my sensuality.

For a moment I am shaken.

How can this be? I was so careful at dinner.

Oh God, the cauliflower.

Why? On this day of all days.

The day I wear the crown of woman.

I travel through time.

Suddenly I am 9 years old, in Sister Mercede's 4th grade class.

And Christi Ramalo, with her ample bosom and hairy upper lip,

Tells me I'm not cool enough to be in the 7-Up club.

And all my mother can say is,

“Honey, sometimes life just isn't fair.”

For a moment I fantasize

Just letting it rip.

Will you liken me to some winsome peasant?

Will you love the honesty of it?

Maybe you'll think I'm earthy.

Next, I imagine standing up,

Clutching the bedpost

And proudly declaring,

“It is I, Flatula!”

Would that frighten you, my love?

My muscles tighten

And I begin to pray,

Sweet Baby Jesus

Let your light shine through me and

Neutralize this demon squash-like gas.

I feel an enormous thrust. Is it over?

You cover me with kisses and tenderly pat my thigh.

I tense up and hope for a miracle.

I whisper, “Sweet dreams, my love.”

Barely able to contain the steaming monster inside me.

You begin to snore.

I press myself against the wall,

Adhering my buttocks firmly to it

And say twenty-seven

Hail Marys.

I relax for one tiny moment and it moves,

Explodes.

And I am thrown from the bed.

Dear God help me!

A loose chunk of plaster breaks from the ceiling

And flies through the air.

I try to throw myself in front of it.

I try to cheat fate.

But it is too late.

Too late my love.

The plaster chunk delivers

A cruel but swift death.

I cradle your dented head in my arms and I weep.

I weep for the cruelty of fate,

The loss of true love,

And my lack of muscle control.

I blame myself.

 

Slam Action

This poem by Ritah Parrish comes from the recent phenomenon of “poetry slams,” where poets stand up in front of a crowd and duel with words. Slam poems, like this one, often tell stories, play with expectations and conventions, and try to shock by using powerful images or raucous humor. It's not a craft for fainthearted lovers
.

Julia Alvarez

W
e're always fighting about household chores

but with this twist: we fight
to do
the work:

both wanting to fix dinner, mow the lawn,

haul the recycling boxes to the truck,

or wash the dishes when our guests depart.

I don't mean little spats, I mean real fights,

banged doors and harsh words over the soapsuds.

You did it last night! No fair, you shopped!

The feast spoils while we argue portions —

both so afraid of taking advantage.

But love should be unbalanced, a circus clown

carrying a tower of cups and saucers

who slips on a banana peel and lands

with every cup still full of hot coffee—

well, almost every cup. A field of seeds

pushing their green hopes through the frozen earth

to what might be spring or a springlike day

midwinter. Love ignores neat measures,

the waves leave ragged wet marks on the shore,

autumn lights one more fire in the maples.

Tonight, you say you're making our dinner

and won't let me so much as stir the sauce.

I march up to my study in a huff.

The oven buzzer sounds, the smells waft up

of something good I try hard to ignore

while I cook up my paper concoction.

Finally, you call me down to your chef d'oeuvre:

a three-course meal! I hand you mine, this poem.

Briefly, the scales balance between us:

food for the body, nurture for the soul.

 

Unbalanced Love

Here's a portrait of a partnership in which roles are reversed, expectations overturned, and the lovers become dueling jugglers in a carefully choreographed slapstick scene. With, of course, a happy ending
.

Chef d'oeuvre =
Masterpiece
.

Wendy Cope

C
an someone make my simple wish come true?

Male biker seeks female for touring fun.

Do you live in North London? Is it you?

Gay vegetarian whose friends are few,

I'm into music, Shakespeare and the sun.

Can someone make my simple wish come true?

Executive in search of something new —

Perhaps bisexual woman, arty, young.

Do you live in North London? Is it you?

Successful, straight and solvent? I am too —

Attractive Jewish lady with a son.

Can someone make my simple wish come true?

I'm Libran, inexperienced and blue —

Need slim non-smoker, under twenty-one.

Do you live in North London? Is it you?

Please write (with photo) to Box 152

Who knows where it may lead once we've begun?

Can someone make my simple wish come true?

Do you live in North London? Is it you?

 

Personal Notice

Unlike the sonnet, the poetic form known as the villanelle is rarely employed for love poetry. It has a long tradition in light and humorous verse, by virtue of its repeating phrases and tight structure. And, though it has been used for serious poems as well, this is not one of them
.

 

LOOKING FOR KERMIT

The problem of the one-night stand is nothing new. But in a fast-moving modern culture, finding a prince among all the frogs has gotten much more complicated
.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

I
, being born a woman and distressed

By all the needs and notions of my kind,

Am urged by your propinquity to find

Your person fair, and feel a certain zest

To bear your body's weight upon my breast:

So subtly is the fume of life designed,

To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind,

And leave me once again undone, possessed.

Think not for this, however, the poor treason

Of my stout blood against my staggering brain,

I shall remember you with love, or season

My scorn with pity, — let me make it plain:

I find this frenzy insufficient reason

For conversation when we meet again.

 

Body Language

The newly liberated post-Victorian attitudes of the Roaring Twenties show up often in the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay, who so distinctively employs a formal poetic diction against a context of modernity. In this sonnet the poet's mind is saying one thing, in precise, poetic language; her body, however, says something else
.

Propinquity =
Nearness, proximity
.

 

AFTER THE FALL

Among the consequences of Adam and Eve's expulsion from the Garden, apparently, are rocky relationships. The next two poems are very flawed voices singing lovers' complaints from east of Eden
.

 

Unhandyman

For Alan Dugan, lousy carpentry skills become an image of humanity's broken, fallen, imperfect search for love and connection. We sympathize. Even so, we imagine what it would be like driving on a trip with him and having to get him to stop and ask for directions …

I and Thou =
Also the title of a book by the Jewish theologian Martin Buber (1878–1965)
.

Carpenter =
Jesus was, by tradition, a carpenter
.

Hell =
For Buber (and, by extension, for the poet) love — both divine and human — is possible only where subject relates to subject (I to
thou)
rather that subject to object (I to it). Lovers share equally in care, commitment, and responsibility. Aloneness, estrangement, and lack of connection become hell
.