Suggestions please, DUers! I would like your picks for my seminar "The Poetry of Love."

[CTyankee]

Please post your suggestions. I will be holding the Study Group for the Institute for Learning In Retirement here in New Haven during April and May. My thinking now is to break it into 6 sessions: The Power of Love, Love and Passion, Love and Loss, Love and Treachery, 2 more TBD (perhaps one on Love and Transcendence).

I want to cover many different cultures and eras, altho English and American poetry now predominate. Any you can suggest would be very welcome!

Some of the poets I'm including are Sappho, Rumi, Shakespeare, Keats, Byron, Donne, Lovelace, Dickinson, Yeats, Lorca, Stevens, Auden, Frost, Kay Ryan, whoever wrote The Song of Solomon.

I need more women poets and poets of color...

Also, if you could suggest any essays on the subject of love poetry in general it would help.

Thank you...as always, DU!

[valerief]

1. Which poet wrote, "There once was a girl from Nantucket," ?

Only joshing. Good luck! :hi:

[KittyWampus]

16. I actually think this is a great idea. Love Poetry/Writing in Folk Literature. Seriously.

[CTyankee]

38. Kitty, you've hit a nerve with me!

Except that I would put country western music in the folk literature section. I think of those sad, sad songs and wonder if there is not a genre of poetry among them, truly. It's too bad that poetry is such the province of the Ivy covered walls of academia. So many of today's poets really want to break free of its narrow ambit but there seems to be no meeting ground of this musical art and poetry and it's too bad. And I can enjoy and appreciate both but it always seems to be on opposite sides of the aisle...

[NJCher]

43. actually there is

It's too bad that poetry is such the province of the Ivy covered walls of academia. So many of today's poets really want to break free of its narrow ambit but there seems to be no meeting ground of this musical art and poetry and it's too bad.

That's what the poetry slam is a response to. Originated by Marc Kelli Smith, a blue collar worker, the poet crosses the line between the "reading" and the song. They are very expressive in their delivery. Here's SlamPapi's web site:

http://www.slampapi.com/

Also, if you want to borrow my .ppt on the origins of the poetry slam, PM me and I'll make arrangements to send it to you.



Cher

[elehhhhna]

2. the cinnamon peeler, by michael ondaatje

http://www.lifesci.ucsb.edu/~haddock/poems/cinnamon.html

[CTyankee]

7. Thank you. It is quite lovely. Reminds me a bit of Rumi...

[patrice]

3. Gerard Manley Hopkins for Divine Love manifest in flawed Humanity.

The Windhover is especially well known, because John Boy Walton read it on the Waltons some years ago.

[patrice]

10. I guess you could put this one under "The Power of Love" for lines such as . . .

". . . Brute beauty and act, oh air, pride, plume
Here buckle! And the fire that breaks from thee then
A billion times lovlier, more dangerous, Oh my chevalier!
No wonder of it,
Shear plod makes plow down sillion shine
And blue bleak embers
Ah, my dears,
Fall, gall themselves and gash gold vermillion."

I'm not certain I have those line breaks right, because I'm doing this from my memory, where this poem exists as a whole, but anyway you get the idea here of committing ourselves (buckling) to one another and what grows from that is a lovely, dangerous in certain ways, and also laborious sacrifice (ploughing the field) that yeilds wonders. BTW, I saw a gloss once that said the reference to "sillion shine" is about a certain mineral that is/was sometimes un-earthed by ploughing. It's been a while since I studied this stuff, but I think that would be in keeping with Hopkins as a rather LATE Romanticist, maybe more properly a post-Romanticist, i.e. those who saw the natural world as the sign of the (Christian) spiritual world.

[CTyankee]

12. This calls out for a multi media approach

such as here with Bernini:

[patrice]

17. Very sexy, that! I have always thought so and I'm a cradle Catholic, though a fallen one

at this point.

[skip fox]

19. And beside Bernini's use of the imagery ot sexual ecstasy to portray religious ecstasy,

put Donne's "Batter my heart, three-person God."

[CTyankee]

41. Went back to read this poem. What an oration of action verbs!

And I say this in devotion to his art. My god, what a drive of passion (perhaps aided by his testosterone?). He does see this whole panorama as almost a battle scene right out of quattrocentro paintings...

[PhiBetaCretin1]

71. I was going to suggest Donne also!

The instant I saw your thread subject line, I immediately thought of Donne. YES! "Batter my heart, three-person God"!!

Gerard Manley Hopkins came to mind also. Seems a bunch of us are of like mind.

:yourock:

[patrice]

4. Walt Whitman's Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking - for lost love.

[msedano]

5. rrsalinas "songs of love"

At the foot of this column, find rrsalinas reading his work

http://labloga.blogspot.com/2008/12/1973-festival-de-flor-y-canto-update_02.html


and Yeats' pair, "When You Are Old" and "Sweetheart do Not Love Too Long"

and Shakespeare's sonnet, "That time of year thou may'st in me behold..."

finally, "metonymies" screams intensity of love gone sour

http://labloga.blogspot.com/2009/02/st-valentines-day-mesoamerican.html

[CTyankee]

9. Thank you. A nice resource...

[Berry Cool]

6. Li Bai's "Changgan xing" (translated by Ezra Pound as "The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter")

Such beautiful imagery, of love and longing and missing, in so few words.

(Li Bai is also known as Li Po and by several other names.)

[CTyankee]

8. It is on my list. A wonderful poem and very gently evocative...

[canetoad]

11. Shakespeare

Sonnet 20, for it's ambiguity.

[CTyankee]

14. It is that, for sure...I had never read that one. It's very tricky.

Here's my pick from Shakespeare, which I place in the Love and Treachery category:

My love is as a fever, longing still
For that which longer nurseth the disease,
Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,
The uncertain sickly appetite to please.
My reason, the physician to my love,
Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,
Hath left me, and I desperate now approve
Desire is death, which physic did except.
Past cure I am, now reason is past care,
And frantic-mad with evermore unrest;
My thoughts and my discourse as madmen's are,
At random from the truth vainly express'd;
For I have sworn thee fair and thought thee bright,
Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.

[LooseWilly]

54. Try sonnet 130.

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15557

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun (Sonnet 130)
by William Shakespeare

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.



My personal favorite of his sonnets...

[Hannah Bell]

45. wrong plce

[wellstone dem]

13. "Bicycles: Love Poems" by NIkki Giovanni

Read "Bicycles: Love Poems" by Nikki Giovanni

Amazing, amazing poems.

Here are just a few stanzas from her poem Bicycles:

Bicycles move
With the flow
Of the earth

Like a cloud
So quiet
In the October sky
Like liking ice cream
From a cone
Like knowing you
Will always be there

All day long I wait
For the sunset

The first star
The moon rise

I move to a midnight Poem
Called
You
Propping
Against
The dangers

[CTyankee]

15. Thank you for that! I once had a book of Giovanni's poetry...long ago.

I remember how much she impressed me...I was about 25 at the time...I remember wishing I could meet her and talk to her about some poem she wrote (I've forgotten which one) that so beguiled me.

[skip fox]

18. Love of the divine: John Donne, G. M. Hopkins, Edward Taylor, George Herbert

but you could add Ann Bradstreet usefully as well. (Herbert and Taylor seem to have the most intimate connection with the divine I know in English and American poetry.) These are the most convincing in general.

Child's love of father: Theodore Roethke" "My Papa's Waltz" (which is not about abuse) and "Otto." John Berryman's last few of his first 77 Dream Songs for his father who had committed suicide.

"Love" for a dead student (actually for the graceful opening of potential): Roethke's "Elegy for Jane."

"I know a woman lovely in her bones" is another by Roethke, a send up on sexual love as is Andrew Marvell's "If we had world enough and time" (first line).

Sonnet sequences by Shakespeare and Sydney are rife and ripe with love as is much of 17th century English poetry.

Wyatt's lovely "They flee from me, that sometime did me seek" is a song of lost vitality in the opposite sex's eye.

Poet's love for poet: About ten poems (soon after the first 77) in Berryman's complete Dream Songs for the dead Delmore Swartz. In fact many elegies from Shelley's for Keats, Tennyson's "In Memoriam,"

Many Epithelium (marriage poems) the most famous of which is probably Spencer's for his marriage

Love for lost childhood: Dylan Thomas's "Fern Hill."

Crazy love: "Songs for Jonnas" by Mina Loy (a long poem in which she resolves her feeling for a lover who has spurned her but not without nightmarish hauntings, obsessive longings, etc., even though she knows he's a romantic bum).

Love for children: Bradstreet! (As is her love "To My Dear and Loving Husband" and an earlier one to him when "absent on public employment" . . . I can't remember the exact title._)

Love of animals? Christopher Smarts poem to his cat?

I could list all day. I keep thinking of more: Basil Bunting's "Briggflats" about a love lost for 50 years. ("Easier to die than remember.")

What a great topic. What at breath of spring in the lungs of the old!

[CTyankee]

21. What do you suggest in the Passion of Love segment?

Here's one I like:

WHENAS in silks my Julia goes
Then, then (methinks) how sweetly flows
That liquefaction of her clothes.

Next, when I cast mine eyes and see
That brave vibration each way free; 5
Oh how that glittering taketh me!

[skip fox]

23. Ah, yes, lovely, and such flowing of the robes, etc.

!

[CTyankee]

31. The way "liquifaction" rolls out...

you've got to love our language for just such moments...

[EFerrari]

20. When Enobarbus deserts Anthony in A&C

his soliloquy is a love song. It's about 4.9.7 or so.

ETA: There's a bunch of great love poetry between men in SH.

[CTyankee]

44. Back to my old edition of Shakespeare's Complete Works for me!

That sounds wonderful..thanks so much for the suggestion. It's one that could be a great addition to the course offering...

[EFerrari]

49. I'm so jealous that you get to teach that course.

You MUST include this one:

William Butler Yeats. b. 1865

863. When You are Old

WHEN you are old and gray and full of sleep
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace, 5
And loved your beauty with love false or true;
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled 10
And paced upon the mountains overhead,
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

---------

Have a great time, CTYankee!

[CTyankee]

56. It is indeed included along with this "Had I the cloths of heaven"

which I cannot for the life of me find on Google tonight. My apologies...it's a nice poem...

[skip fox]

22. Here are some very attractive ones:

Ezra Pound translated and ancient Chinese poet (Tu Fu?) who took the persona of a young woman (16?) who has fallen in love with her arranged-marriage husband: "The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter." Everyone love this!

A long poem by the wayward William Carlos Williams to his wife, expressing his love deep in old age (after the bloom is long gone and the darkness of destruction--historical/personal--surround him): "Asphodel, th ge Greeny Flower." Long, but lovely and very rich. Maybe a selection would be very appropriate for your class. Love in old age . . . Hmmm.

Wallace Stevens's late poem to his "interior paramour"--his imagination as though it was a woman. (Otherwise, as with Frost, it's hard to really find a "regular" love poem in his work.)

Eliot's "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is, of course, ironic.

Pound's persona Hugh Selwyn Mauberly, in the poem title as such, presumably writes "Envoi" and that is a beautiful love poem. ("Tell her who sheds such treasures in the air . . .") AH! And many of his translations from the Provencal are also love songs.

Whitman's "Out of the Cradle" has two lost loves in it: one bird for the other, and the aging bard's love for his sad brother, but it's really about a reconciliation with loss and despair through remembering (deeply, to tears) the outsetting bard's clue, the key: that poetry/deep emotional outpouring and oneness, even if the feeling is a "sweet hell within," is a transcendent fulfillment. What about his lov e for Lincon in "When Lilacs Last . . ."?

Hart Crane's love for Whitman in the later sections of The Bridge.

Love of parents/past/place: Lorine Neidecker's "Paean to Place."

[skip fox]

24. "Wild nights, wild nights!!!!!!" How did I forget sweet Emily?

and the master and mistress poems!

[CTyankee]

30. "Wild nights" is a helluva poem.

As usual, she gives us such ambiguity and we DO love our ambiguity. Mooring a ship in the sea is probably one of the best images of the impossibility of love at its most passionate...

I am including that one in the Passion of Love category. But in the Love and Loss segment I plan to use her "The Soul Selects its own Society/and then shuts the door." Anothor ambiguous one. It could just as easily be seen in another context, one of beautifuly coexistence with the love object, shutting the world out.

[skip fox]

39. The Fugs have a section in their song "Dreams of Sexual Perfection"

about "sweet, sweet Emily" using this poem as its lyrical harbor. This section is really stunning, and I think shows the love with which she is regarded by contemproary poets.

[CTyankee]

42. well, don't you think her ambiguity has something to do with it?

Esp. with those rock artists. There's a connection there that is uncanny. This is not the first time I have heard of a rock band finding Dickinson simpatico with their own ideas and creative vision. She is a continual enigma, and very tantalizing at the same time...

[skip fox]

69. The Fugs are not an ordinary band. Poet Ed Sanders et al. do anything

from ancient Greek poetry to satires on country western songs. Worth looking into. Esp. Sanders

[skip fox]

70. The Fugs are not an ordinary band. Poet Ed Sanders et al. do anything

from ancient Greek poetry to satires on country western songs. Worth looking into. Esp. Sanders

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

25. Here's a short one.

My life has been the awaiting of you...
your footfall, my own heart beat.

-- Paul Valery, The Footsteps

[EFerrari]

50. Another short one from Atwood:

You fit into me
like a hook into an eye
a fish hook
an open eye

[skip fox]

26. e. e. cummings' "My father moved through depths of love."

in fact cumming's has a number of highly sexual ones.

Robert Creeley's first major collection is titled For Love and love (real and often hard) is almost always "running in the background" and often on stage.

Robert Duncan has a number of highly (and high quality) homo-erotic poems like "The Torso." (Any for Jess?)

Edward Dorn wrote a beautiful sequence "Twenty-One Love Songs for Jennifer" (I could be off on some of these titles . . . all my books are at the office.)

There are multiple anthologies of love poetry--the type of volume (beside historical surveys and the books of a few major writers) often aquired by public libraries.

Ginsberg is another homosexual poet who may have written some significant love poems.

Whitman's Callamus poems, of course.

[skip fox]

27. Elizabeth Barret and Rober Browning, of course, had a love affair

in both letters and life.

(I'd not look at Plath/Hughes, except at maybe one or two of hers for her children.)

Frank O'Hara is another who has lovely, light and airy homosexual love poems.

John Weiners was always in love, often with movie stars.

Gregory Corso's "Marriage" is a lovely cry for love and in the belief of its possibility.

Bukowski (yikes) Love is a Dog from Hell. (I might not go there, but . . .)

Mary Bernard is said to be the best Sappho translator.

Gilgamesh depicts a deep love of man for man.

[CTyankee]

32. "Madonna of the Evening Flowers" by Amy Lowell. Nice.

All day long I have been working
Now I am tired.
I call: "Where are you?"
But there is only the oak tree rustling in the wind.
The house is very quiet,
The sun shines in on your books,
On your scissors and thimble just put down,
But you are not there.
Suddenly I am lonely:
Where are you?
I go about searching.

Then I see you,
Standing under a spire of pale blue larkspur,
With a basket of roses on your arm.
You are cool, like silver,
And you smile.
I think the Canterbury bells are playing little tunes,
You tell me that the peonies need spraying,
That the columbines have overrun all bounds,
That the pyrus japonica should be cut back and rounded.
You tell me these things.
But I look at you, heart of silver,
White heart-flame of polished silver,
Burning beneath the blue steeples of the larkspur,
And I long to kneel instantly at your feet,
While all about us peal the loud, sweet Te Deums of the Canterbury bells.

[CTyankee]

33. I'm not much for the browning love poetry. However, I do love his

witty poem on Fra Lippo Lippi (arguably the Renaissance artist who "does" the best madonnas, IMO of course). In fact, I plan on visiting their apartment near the Palazzo Pitti (if I can) when I go to Florence later this year...I think it's such a hoot that he gave her the "chianti cure" for her laudenum addiction there...

[skip fox]

28. Any by D. H. Lawrence? His poetry often overlooked.

?

[CTyankee]

36. I never think of him as a poet. I will do research on his stuff to see if

hehas any love poems.

Skip, here is a poem I found in Kay Ryan's "Say Uncle" collection. I plan to put it in the Love and Loss section. It is, as usual in her understated way, a very sad poem (to me):

That Will to Divest

Action creates
a taste
for itself.
Meaning: once
you've swept
the shelves
of spoons
and plates
you kept
for guests,
it gets harder
not to also
simplify the larder,
not to dismiss
rooms, not to
divest yourself
off all the chairs
but one, not
to test what
singleness can bear,
once you've begun.

[skip fox]

37. Wow.

I don't know Ryan, but I will.

(As an old hermit peot/professor "testing what singleness can bear" is not a way of life, but the.

[CTyankee]

40. She's our poet laureate, dude...

to paraphrase my daughter who resides in California! Which is where Ryan lives.

Kay Ryan is a discovery I only made within the last year or so. I was so taken with her that I designed a course for ILR around her and Elizabeth Warren (Obama's Inaugural poet) but it was too narrow in its focus and couldn't attract too much attendance...

Go on youtube to see her reciting some of her poetry, particularly her "Patience." It has the great line:

Who would
have guessed
it possible
that waiting
is sustainable---
a place with
its own harvests.

You are in for a treat! "Elephant Rocks" is another collection that I have of hers andis great...

Oh, and please, please do share more of your "old hermit poet/professor" findings with me...I love discussing/learning more about poetry...it's a great treat. Not too many of us left in the reliquary...

[yellowwood]

29. Love Poems

I never read a love poem that I liked
And I know why--
"Cause poetry must tell the truth
And lovers lie.

[LeftishBrit]

34. Why on EARTH is this being unrec'd??

For poetry from a wide variety of cultures, some of which should be very suitable, see Ruth Finnegan's "The Penguin Book of Oral Poetry". I will post a couple of examples tomorrow, when I have access to this book.

In the meantime, you may be interested in the following anonymous English folk song:

'Do you love an apple, do you love a pear?
Do you love a laddie with curly brown hair?


Chorus

And still, I love him, I can't deny him
I'll be with him wherever he goes.


Before I got married I wore a black shawl
But now that I'm married I wear bugger-all


Chorus

He stood at the corner, a fag in his mouth
Two hands in his pockets, he whistled me out


Chorus

He works at the pier, for nine pound a week,
Saturday night he comes rolling home drunk

Chorus

Before I got married I'd sport and I'd play
But now, the cradle gets in me way


Chorus

Do you love an apple, do you love a pear?
Do you love a laddie with curly brown hair?
And still, I love him, I can't deny him
I'll be with him wherever he goes.'


And IMO such a course would have to include at least one poem by Robert Burns.

[CTyankee]

35. Thank you! I welcome anything you can suggest!

As for the Unrec, I would certainly expect an Unrec for this thread. Some people find poetry utterly unlikeable, probably because they don't understand it. And it's easy to hate what you don't understand. It challenges people, also, and the Unreccers sound to me like a bunch of hooligans breaking up a gathering of people whom they do not like because they are "different." Not all Unreccers, just the ones who "hit and run" and don't explain why they are Unreccing.

Their loss...

[tishaLA]

46. "The Mother" by Gwendolyn Brooks is good

ostensibly about the love a mother has for her aborted child--but Barbara Johnson's reading of the poem undoes that superficial claim pretty thoroughly.

Elizabeth Bishop wrote some amazing love poems, as did Adrienne Rich. I feel like Hart Crane has to appear somewhere if you're talking about love, but it might be more correct to say that his poems are about desire (O harp and altar, of the fury fused, / (How could mere toil align thy choiring strings!) / Terrific threshold of the prophet's pledge, / Prayer of pariah, and the lover's cry,--). Louise Gluck has a number of great poems about love--I think "Circe's Torment" might be one of the better ones. I'd also include one of Gertrude Stein's poems because they are funny and confuse students. "Susie Asado"is one of my favorites.

[InkAddict]

47. Include the love poems of Rumi...

http://peacefulrivers.homestead.com/Rumilove.html

[CTyankee]

57. yes, I had a grad course that included Rumi so I have many of his poems..

Such beauty and sweep. His passion is encompassing. The course I took was one in Mysticism and he tookup half of it, the half that everybody loved. It was great...so yes I am including his stuff, not only to be multi cultural but also because of its loviliness...

[Hannah Bell]

48. wrong plce

[Hannah Bell]

51. Women: Eliz. Barrett Browning:

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.

I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.

I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.


Emily bronte:

Love and Friendship

Love is like the wild rose-briar,
Friendship like the holly-tree
The holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms
But which will bloom most constantly?

The wild-rose briar is sweet in the spring,
Its summer blossoms scent the air;
Yet wait till winter comes again
And who will call the wild-briar fair?

Then scorn the silly rose-wreath now
And deck thee with the holly's sheen,
That when December blights thy brow
He may still leave thy garland green.


Emily Dickinson

Poem 22 ( I gave myself to him )

I gave myself to him,
And took himself for pay.
The solemn contract of a life
Was ratified this way

The value might disappoint,
Myself a poorer prove
Than this my purchaser suspect,
The daily own of Love

Depreciates the sight;
But, 'til the merchant buy,
Still fabled, in the isles of spice
The subtle cargoes lie.

At least, 'tis mutual risk,
Some found it mutual gain;
Sweet debt of Life, each night to owe,
Insolvent, every noon.


Christina Rossetti

Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you plann'd:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.


Plus the folk canon of lost love, i.e. House of the Rising Son (woman's song originally), Water is Wide, etc., e.g. Silver Dagger:

Don't sing love songs; you'll wake my mother
She's sleeping here, right by my side
And in her right hand, a silver dagger
She says that I can't be your bride.

All men are false, says my mother
They'll tell you wicked, lovin' lies
The very next evening, they'll court another
Leave you alone to pine and sigh.

My daddy is a handsome devil
He's got a chain five miles long
And on every link a heart does dangle
Of another maid he's loved and wronged.

Go court another tender maiden
And hope that she will be your wife
For I've been warned and I've decided
To sleep alone all of my life.


http://www.amazon.com/Love-Poems-Women-Anthology-Through/dp/0449905381

[Hannah Bell]

52. Thomas Wyatt

Whoso List to Hunt, I Know Where is an Hind

Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind,
But as for me, helas, I may no more.
The vain travail hath wearied me so sore,
I am of them that farthest cometh behind.
Yet may I by no means my wearied mind
Draw from the deer, but as she fleeth afore
Fainting I follow. I leave off therefore,
Sithens in a net I seek to hold the wind.
Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt,
As well as I may spend his time in vain.
And graven with diamonds in letters plain
There is written, her fair neck round about:
Noli me tangere, for Caesar's I am,
And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.

Sir Thomas Wyatt - on Anne Boleyn


They Flee from Me
Thomas Wyatt

They flee from me that sometime did me seek
With naked foot stalking in my chamber.
I have seen them gentle tame and meek
That now are wild and do not remember
That sometime they put themselves in danger
To take bread at my hand; and now they range
Busily seeking with a continual change.

Thanked be fortune, it hath been otherwise
Twenty times better; but once in special,
In thin array after a pleasant guise,
When her loose gown from her shoulders did fall,
And she me caught in her arms long and small;
And therewithal sweetly did me kiss,
And softly said, Dear heart, how like you this?

It was no dream, I lay broad waking.
But all is turned thorough my gentleness
Into a strange fashion of forsaking;
And I have leave to go of her goodness
And she also to use newfangleness.
But since that I so kindely am served,
I would fain know what she hath deserved.

They Flee from Me
Thomas Wyatt

[Hannah Bell]

53. Mark Boyd

Mark Alexander Boyd. 1563–1601

FRom bank to bank, from wood to wood I run,
Overcome with my feeble fantasie;
Like to a leaf that falls from a tree,
Or to a reed ourblown with the wind.

Two gods guides me: the one of them is blind, 5
Yea and a bairn brought up in vanity;
The next a wife engendered of the sea,
And lighter than a dolphin with her fin.

Unhappy is the man for evermore
That tills the sand and sows in the air; 10
But twice unhappier is he, I learn,
That feeds in his heart a mad desire,
And follows on a woman through the fire,
Led by a blind and teached by a bairn.

two gods = cupid/venus

http://heritage.helical-library.net/boyd/sonet.asp.


i updated it for english speakers... :>)

[LooseWilly]

55. A love poem or 13 from Charles Bukowski, such as "To the Whore Who Took My Poems"...

http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/charles_bukowski/poems/12976

To The Whore Who Took My Poems by Charles Bukowski
some say we should keep personal remorse from the
poem,
stay abstract, and there is some reason in this,
but jezus;
twelve poems gone and I don't keep carbons and you have
my
paintings too, my best ones; its stifling:
are you trying to crush me out like the rest of them?
why didn't you take my money? they usually do
from the sleeping drunken pants sick in the corner.
next time take my left arm or a fifty
but not my poems:
I'm not Shakespeare
but sometime simply
there won't be any more, abstract or otherwise;
there'll always be mony and whores and drunkards
down to the last bomb,
but as God said,
crossing his legs,
I see where I have made plenty of poets
but not so very much
poetry.



(A random one of Bukoswki's poems found with a cursory google search. There are volumes... )

[bridgit]

58. Geanina Medana

http://www.myspace.com/geaninamedana

[G_j]

59. Wedding Song, BobDylan

Wedding Song

I love you more than ever, more than time and more than love
I love you more than money and more than the stars above
I love you more than madness, more than waves upon the sea
I love you more than life itself, you mean that much to me.

Ever since you walked right in the circle's been complete
I've said goodbye to haunted rooms and faces in the street
In the courtyard of the jester which is hidden from the sun
I love you more than ever and I haven't yet begun.

You breathed on me and made my life a richer one to live
When I was deep in poverty you taught me how to give
Dried the tears up from my dreams and pulled me from the hole
I love you more than ever and it binds me to this all.

You gave me babies, one, two, three, what is more, you saved my life
Eye for eye and tooth for tooth, your love cuts like a knife
My thoughts of you don't ever rest, they'd kill me if I lie
But I'd sacrifice the world for you and watch my senses die.

The tune that is yours and mine to play upon this earth
We'll play it out the best we know, whatever it is worth
What's lost is lost, we can't regain what went down in the flood
But happiness to me is you and I love you more than blood.

It's never been my duty to remake the world at large
Nor is it my intention to sound a battle charge
'Cause I love you more than all of that with a love that doesn't bend
And if there is eternity I'd love you there again.

Oh, can't you see that you were born to stand by my side
And I was born to be with you, you were born to be my bride
You're the other half of what I am, you're the missing piece
And I love you more than ever with that love that doesn't cease.

You turn the tide on me each day and teach my eyes to see
Just being next to you is a natural thing for me
And I could never let you go, no matter what goes on
'Cause I love you more than ever now that the past is gone.

[Hannah Bell]

60. non-european: neruda/india

DON'T GO FAR OFF, NOT EVEN FOR A DAY

Don't go far off, not even for a day, because --
because -- I don't know how to say it: a day is long
and I will be waiting for you, as in an empty station
when the trains are parked off somewhere else, asleep.

Don't leave me, even for an hour, because
then the little drops of anguish will all run together,
the smoke that roams looking for a home will drift
into me, choking my lost heart.

Oh, may your silhouette never dissolve on the beach;
may your eyelids never flutter into the empty distance.
Don't leave me for a second, my dearest,

because in that moment you'll have gone so far
I'll wander mazily over all the earth, asking,
Will you come back? Will you leave me here, dying?

Pablo Neruda



Gibran/lebanese immigrant

http://www.poemhunter.com/khalil-gibran/


China:

Kuan Tao-Sheng (1262-1319) (female)

You and I
Have so much love
That it
Burns like a fire,
In which we bake a lump of clay
Molded into a figure of you
And a figure of me.
Then we take both of them,
And break them into pieces,
And mix the pieces with water,
And mold again a figure of you,
And a figure of me.
I am in your clay.
You are in my clay.
In life we share a single quilt.
In death we will share one bed.


Li Po:

The Jewel Stairs' Grievance


The jewelled steps are already quite white with dew,
It is so late that the dew soaks my gauze stockings,
And I let down the crystal curtain
And watch the moon through the clear autumn.
(tr. Ezra Pound,

who adds the following

NOTE: Jewel stairs, therefore a palace. Grievance, therefore there is something to complain of. Gauze stockings, therefore a court lady, not a servant who complains. Clear autumn, therefore he has no excuse on account of the weather. Also she has come early, for the dew has not merely whitened the stairs, but has soaked her stockings. The poem is especially prized because she utters no direct reproach.)



Japan

Ono no Komachi: The hue of the cherry (9th C. CE)

Ono no Komachi was a fine poet, but she was also a great court beauty whose love affairs became the plots of more than one Noh drama. Many of her poems used multiple puns (called "pivot words") to create complex layers of meaning.


The hue of the cherry
fades too quickly from sight
all for nothing
this body of mine grows old --
spring rain ceaselessly falling.

****

Although I come to you constantly
over the roads of dreams,
those nights of love
are not worth one waking touch of you.


****


Prince Otsu (663-86): Poem sent by Prince Otsu to Lady Ishikawa

In the classical age much of the verse was occasional poetry, and poetic exchanges were a necessary part of courtship. In this exchange the Lady Ishikawa has taken Prince Otsu's poem and cleverly rearranged it. She repeats in the forth line what Prince Otsu has repeated in lines two and five of his poem.

How does Lady Ishakawa turn Prince Otsu's complaint at having been stood up into a compliment which reassures him of her continuing love?

Gentle foothills, and
in the dew drops of the mountains,
soaked, I waited for you--
grew wet from standing there
in the dew drops of the mountains.

Lady Ishikawa (7th C. CE): Poem by Lady Ishikawa in response

Waiting for me,
you grew wet there
in gentle foothills,
in the dew drops of the mountains--
I wish I'd been such drops of dew.
Though I go to you
ceaselessly along dream paths,
the sum of those trysts
is less than a single glimpse
granted in the waking world.

***


Anonymous: In the autumn fields

From the early section of the love poems of the Kokinoshu.

In the autumn fields
mingled with the pampas grass
flowers are blooming
should my love too, spring forth
or shall we never meet?

***

Mibu no Tadamine: On Kasuga plain

Having seen a young lady at the Kasuga festival, Tadamine asked where she lived and sent this poem.

On Kasuga plain
between those patches of snow
just beginning to sprout,
glimpsed, the blades of grass,
like those glimpses of you.


**
In the dusk the path
You used to come to me
Is overgrown and indistinguishable,
Except for the spider webs
That hang across it
Like threads of sorrow.

IZUMI SHIKIBU (11th century)

***


When she was still alive
We would go out, arm in arm,
And look at the elm trees
Growing on the embankment
In front of our house.
Their branches were interlaced.
Their crowns were dense with spring leaves.
They were like our love.
Love and trust were not enough to turn back
The wheels of life and death.
She faded like a mirage over the desert.
One morning like a bird she was gone
In the white scarves of death.
Now when the child
Whom she left in her memory
Cries and begs for her,
All I can do is pick him up
And hug him clumsily.
I have nothing to give him.
In our bedroom our pillows
Still lie side by side,
As we lay once.
I sit there by myself
And let the days grow dark.
I lie awake at night, sighing till daylight.
No matter how much I mourn
I shall never see her again.
They tell me her spirit
May haunt Mount Hagai
Under the eagles’ wings.
I struggle over the ridges
And climb to the summit.
I know all the time
That I shall never see her,
Not even so much as a faint quiver in the air.
All my longing, all my love
Will never make any difference.

HITOMARO

[CTyankee]

61. What a treasure of non-Western love poetry! Thank you. It's a great gift to me.

I am saving these in a folder for my course. they are beautiful.

This is great, a real contribution. thanks so much...

[Hannah Bell]

64. i fouled up the cut here:

Lady Ishikawa (7th C. CE): Poem by Lady Ishikawa in response

Waiting for me,
you grew wet there
in gentle foothills,
in the dew drops of the mountains--
I wish I'd been such drops of dew.
Though I go to you
ceaselessly along dream paths,
the sum of those trysts
is less than a single glimpse
granted in the waking world.


The last five lines = duplicate of different poem, don't belong there. should be just:

Waiting for me,
you grew wet there
in gentle foothills,
in the dew drops of the mountains--
I wish I'd been such drops of dew.

[gleaner]

62. I thought of Maya Angelou .....

and here is a link to one of her poems on love http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/touched-by-an-angel/
I think it is beautiful, and hopefully you will like it too.

The Song of Solomon was reputed by Biblical scholars to have been written by King David for his wife. Ecclesiastes which speaks of life gone by and women with cynicism was supposed to have been written by the same author after he became old and cynical. It deals with loss of love, the changing of life from new and magical to something already experienced and what is left.

Good luck. Sounds like a good idea.

[CTyankee]

63. Thanks, how lovely...

I guess I am especially interestd in the Song of Solomon verse that includes "comfort me with apples." What a lovely sentiment for passion...

[mia]

65. Love after Love - Derek Walcott

Love after Love

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.


~ Derek Walcott ~


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ev_JwrnLKWo&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6V8ltOfLJkM&feature=related

[Rowdyboy]

66. For loss, nothing beats Tennyson's "In Memorium"written after the death of his closest friend. ....

My favorite section:

http://tennysonpoetry.home.att.net/7.htm

VII

Dark house, by which once more I stand
Here in the long unlovely street,
Doors, where my heart was used to beat
So quickly, waiting for a hand,

A hand that can be clasp’d no more–
Behold me, for I cannot sleep,
And like a guilty thing I creep
At earliest morning to the door.

He is not here; but far away
The noise of life begins again,
And ghastly thro’ the drizzling rain
On the bald street breaks the blank day.



Walt Whitman wrote the single most powerful piece of "love poetry" I ever read....

When I heard at the Close of the Day
(No. 11, from ‘Calamus’)

When I heard at the close of the day how I had
been praised in the Capitol, still it was not
a happy night for me that followed,
And else when I caroused – nor when my favorite plans were
accomplished – was I really happy,
But the day when I arose at dawn from the perfect
health, electric, inhaling sweet breath
When I saw the full moon in the west grow pale and
disappear in the morning light,
When I wandered alone over the beach, and undressing, bathed,
laughing with the waters, and saw the sun rise,
And when I thought how my friend, my lover, was on
his way coming, then O I was happy,
Each breath tasted sweeter – and all that day my food
nourished me more – and the beautiful day passed well,
And the next came with equal joy – and with the next,
at evening, came my friend,
And that night while all was still I heard the waters roll
slowly continually up the shores,
I heard the hissing rustle of the liquid and sands, as directed
to me, whispering to congratulate me,
For the friend I love lay sleeping by my side,
In the stillness his face was inclined toward me, while the
moon's clear beams shone
And his arm lay lightly over my breast – and that night I was happy.

[FarLeftFist]

67. This poem is one of my favorites.....

http://www.archive.org/details/2TrackwithOlgaAngelinaGarciaPoeminProtest

Edit: Click the player on the right side. I've been looking for this poem in acapella form but can't find it. Very powerful. The music over her voice kinda ruins it for me mostly because it's not mixed well and drowns out her lyrics.

[LeftishBrit]

68. A few more

I now have Ruth Finnegan's book 'The Penguin Book of Oral Poetry' by me, and here are some poems that I like:

HAWAIIAN POEMS

MY SWEETHEART IS THE RIPPLING HILLS OF SAND (Attributed to Princess Likelike)

My sweetheart is the rippling hills of sand
With the sea ruling the pillows.
There, the memory is impassioned
In the forest where we delighted.

The gentle rustle of the sea
Softly in the pleasant centre
Where I looked
We delighted in the forest.

The wind came first.
The Pu'u-lena wind passed by.
You've lost your chance, O friend!
She and I delighted in the forest.

Here, please listen.
Here, your lover is here,
He came last night.
We delighted in the forest.



LOVE IS A SHARK (Anonymous)

Alas! I am seized by the shark, great shark!
Lala-kea with triple teeth.
The stratum of Lolo is gone,
Torn up by the mighty shark,
Niuhi with fiery eyes,
That flamed in the deep blue sea.
Alas! and alas!
When flowers the wili-wili tree,
That is the time the shark-god bites.
Alas! I am seized by the huge shark!
O blue sea, O dark sea,
Foam-mottled sea of Kane!
What pleasure I took in my dancing!
Alas! now consumed by the monster shark!


ALBATROSS, by Lele-io-Hoku

While we are at peace,
Peacefully soars the albatross
And a sweetheart makes love,
Makes loves with a warm heart.

I thought it was so,
Quiet taking over, unsurpassed,
Never before to see such mist
Drooping over calmed water.

To woo in the coolness,
To sway in the purple mist
And hazy view.
To throb here, throb there, throb so.

So that's your way
Superior but bubbling
Sweet clever acts
Like Wai-'ale-'ale




MAORI POEMS

SONG OF LONGING

(A wife is left behind in the ancient homeland of Hawaiki while her first husband has voyaged far across the sea searching for new lands)

Just as eventide draws out
My old affection comes
For him I loved.
Though severed far from me,
And now at Hawa-iki,
I hear his voice
Far distant,and
Though far beyond
The distant mountain peak
Its echoes speak
From vale to vale.


SONG OF DESPAIR by Rangiaho

I weep for my loved one
Give me a sharp stone
Let the salt blood run
From these barren breasts,
This once sweet flesh.

Turn away, hard-hearted one, lest
You see these two hands pressed
Against my heart, let it quiver
Like a leaf, like the breath
Of his last caress.

This red blood from my heart
Is like the mountains, torn apart,
To Tara below and Tauhara above,
Each cold, remote,
As the man I loved.

Let the mist come,
Blot them out, swallow the sun.
Let the bitter wind blow
From the west, bringing snow
From the mountains of Maniapoto.

Come, Hoki of the evil omen.
He cannot hide; there is no horizon.
I shall leap the cliff of death,
This blood, my breath...
One thrust, and I am there.

Too many nights have I yearned
For one who would not return.


THE MIST OVER PUKEHINA (Anonymous)

Look where the mist
Hangs over Pukehina.
There is the path
By which went my love.

Turn back hither
That may be poured out
Tears from my eyes.

It was not I who first spoke of love,
You it was who made advances to me
When I was but a little thing.

Therefore was my heart made wild.
This is my farewell of love to thee.



ZULU POEM

I THOUGHT YOU LOVED ME

(Composed by a woman in her fifties who worked as a domestic servant in Durban, and also ran her own group of singers with great success)

I thought you loved me,
Yet here I am wasting my time on you.
I thought we would be parted only by death,
But today you have disappointed me.
You will never be anything.
You are a disgrace, worthless and unreliable.
Bring my things, I will put them in my pillow.
You take yours and put them under your armpit.
You deceived me.



GOND POEMS

SONG OF LONGING (Anonymous)

Could I remove the stones from the river?
Could I steal the beauty from your face?
Could a silver ring turn into copper?
Another's wife cannot content you
For she is brief as the twilight.
I will hide you, hide your very name
So that I can have you ever for myself.


THE NEW WIFE (sung by the first wife) (Anonymous)

Rust destroys the wheat
She has destroyed your love for me
How I long to cover you
As the moon is hid by clouds
How I long to take you
All to myself
As a mother takes her child.


SHOES ARE MADE TO FIT THE FEET (Anonymous)

Shoes are made to fit the feet;
The horse must fit the rider;
But my parents will choose my husband by their taste, not mine.
Yet it is my fate and not theirs that is wrapped up in the husband.
Alas! Alas! But what does it matter?
Life is but a bubble on the water that is broken by the wind.

MY HEART BURNS FOR HIM (Anonymous)

Raja, my heart is mad for you
I have gone mad for you
But you have left your warm bed in my house
Where will you find warmth outside?
You have left me all alone
You would eat roots and fruit outside
Come, my madman, let us go together to the forest.

Green is the green hill.
Yellow are the bamboo.
Green is the kalindar creeper.
Karenda flowers are in my hair.
Where in the forest will I find my Raja?
My heart burns for him.
Where in the forest will I find my madman?


LONGING (Anonymous)

You play the flute
Of young bamboo
How tenderly you handle
The stops with your five fingers
Putting it in your mouth
Bringing it from within
How is it you cannot hear
Your loved yoke-fellow?


SOMALI POEM

LAMENT FOR A DEAD LOVER, by Siraad Haad

You were the fence standing between our fence and the descendants of Ali,
(Now in your departure), you are the sky which gives no rain while mist shrouds the world.
The moon that shines no more,
The dark sun extinguished,
The dates on their way from Basra cut off by the seas.

[lapislzi]

72. Stanley Kunitz: "Touch Me"

Brought tears to my eyes every time I heard him read it.

Also, "Annunciation" by Marie Howe. Powerful, powerful stuff.

[CTyankee]

73. I think this group of retirees would love "Touch Me."

It gets a little close for comfort for one in the 7th decade of life, but it strikes a true chord...