by: Paul R. Benson
When we dare to fall in love, it is as if our feet stand atop a precipice as we contemplate the leap of faith into the unknown. How far does one have to fall before they find the love they’re looking for? Some fall farther than others, and some choose not to fall at all.
Love is so subjective, it’s almost impossible to describe with words. Just the right words though, and it’s hard not to escape the feeling of love. While making love connections in real life can be challenging, connecting with love poetry can be easier and comforting.
Amy Penne, Poetry Professor at Parkland, has some love poems and insights to share. Penne describes what makes for a good love poem, “Connection. Yearning. Deep longing. Rejection. Retribution. So much goes into love poetry. Our essence as humans is connection–is the movement towards union and connection. The language we use to evoke that and to express it, the language that comes out of the ineffable but seeks the Beloved in the everyday–that is love poetry.”
The first love poem Penne recommends is, “When You Come” by Maya Angelou. The poem reads,
“When you come to me, unbidden,
Beckoning me
To long-ago rooms,
Where memories lie.
Offering me, as to a child, an attic,
Gatherings of days too few.
Baubles of stolen kisses.
Trinkets of borrowed loves.
Trunks of secret words,
I CRY.”
There are multiple ways to interpret why Angelou cries. Maybe it is because she remembers the trust that used to be shared, that is now being used against her. Maybe it’s because she still loves him and does not want to let go of the past.
“A Glimpse,” by Walt Whitman is comforting. It is about the love of two people in a bar. Taking place on a winter’s night, there is a feeling of warmth inside the bar. It’s hard to finish this poem without smiling and feeling warm inside too.
“A glimpse through an interstice caught,
Of a crowd of workmen and drivers in a bar-room around the
stove late of a winter night, and I unremark’d seated in a corner,
Of a youth who loves me and whom I love, silently approaching and seating himself near, that he may hold me by the hand,
A long while amid the noises of coming and going, of drinking and oath and smutty jest,
There we two, content, happy in being together, speaking little, perhaps not a word.”
“A Love Song for Lucinda,” by Langston Hughes, one the greatest modern American poets, is another love poem. In this poem Hughes covers three specific themes that encapsulate the idea of falling in love. The first stanza reads,
“Love Is a ripe plum
Growing on a purple tree.
Taste it once
And the spell of its enchantment
Will never let you be.”
Here Hughes identifies love as an addiction. Love is a drug. Once the love is gone, we are in withdrawal from love. It is the reason why Angelou cries in “When You Come.”
The next fundamental that Hughes describes is the danger in being compelled by love,
“Love
Is a bright star
Glowing in far
Southern skies.
Look too hard
And its burning flame
Will always hurt your eyes.”
It’s easy to be hurt by love and the yearning for love can be so torturous.
The last stanza reads,
“Love Is a high mountain
Stark in a windy sky.
If you
Would never lose your breath
Do not climb too high.”
The comparison between love and climbing a mountain emphasizes the endurance and determination involved with finding and maintaining love, stating that love is worth what you are willing to risk. It is of course a return to the ultimate feeling of surrender. How poetically beautiful is it that his description of surrender can lift us up higher than our fall.
“Love Poem,” by Audre Lorde, legally blind Caribbean-American writer and civil rights activist, is an erotic poem about two female lovers. According to the Poetry Foundation, Audre Lorde described herself as a, “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet,”. What’s so beautiful about this poem is her description of her partner’s body as if it were the natural features of the earth.
The first stanza reads,
“Speak earth and bless me with what is richest make sky flow honey out of my hips rigid mountains spread over a valley carved out by the mouth of rain.”
We are almost prisoners to eroticism, whether we embellish it or not; it’s almost impossible to escape it within our culture, especially in college. It is almost superficial, yet biologically essential for why we love.
The last stanza in this poem reads,
“Greedy as herring-gulls or a child I swing out over the earth over and over again.”
Lorde celebrates the childish simplicity and greedy addiction attached to passionate love. It’s hard to express this type of love publicly without being censored, but it’s still a valid expression of something most human.
No matter who you are and how you love, there is a feeling louder than words involved. Whether or not we stand atop the precipice or are grounded with love, we can still appreciate the feeling of human connection. It is a feeling we shouldn’t attribute to one day out of the year, it is one that we should express as often as we can.
As said by Penne, “St. Valentine’s Day is a made-up holiday for Hallmark to sell cards. And that’s fine. And we can all be jaded about it. But it’s as good a day as any to celebrate love, union, connection and to draw attention to the language we use to find beauty and heart in those we love. We should be about the business of celebrating love every day of the year. But now is as good a time as any. So, love on and read deeply.”
