Love Poetry Out Loud (3 page)

 

LOVE AND ROCKETS

Sometimes fireworks go off, trumpets blare, and choirs sing. Who cares if people look at you oddly? You're in love! Here Robert Penn Warren and Nikki Giovanni exult in the sheer, intoxicating, silly wonder of it all. Can you blame them?

 

Spume =
Foam
.

Winds =
A verb here (with a long i), evoking the image of a watch's mechanical mainspring, with wind wound by the heart
.

Robert Penn Warren

1. Mediterranean Beach, Day after Storm

How instant joy, how clang

And whang the sun, how

Whoop the sea, and oh,

Sun, sing, as whiter than

Rage of snow, let sea the spume

Fling.

Let sea the spume, white, fling,

White on blue wild

With wind, let sun

Sing, while the world

Scuds, clouds boom and belly,

Creak like sails, whiter than,

Brighter than,

Spume in sun-song, oho!

The wind is bright.

Wind the heart winds

In constant coil, turning

In the — forever — light.

Give me your hand.

2. Deciduous Spring

Now, now, the world

All gabbles joy like geese, for

An idiot glory the sky

Bangs. Look!

All leaves are new, are

Now, are

Bangles dangling and

Spangling, in a sudden air

Wangling, then

Hanging quiet, bright.

The world comes back, and again

Is gabbling, and yes,

Remarkably worse, for

The world is a whirl of

Green mirrors gone wild with

Deceit, and the world

Whirls green on a string, then

The leaves go quiet, wink

From their own shade, secretly.

Keep still, just a moment, leaves.

There is something I am trying to remember.

 

Sensations

Warren's poem celebrates the senses—sound, sight, taste, touch, smell—perceptions that all point to something deeper. Read these vignettes like a joyful shout, letting the exuberant sound of the words explode into life. Notice how alliteration (the repetition of sounds at the beginning of words) creates a percussive rhythm
.

 

Pop Art

Where Warren turns to exuberant nature for his imagery. Nikki Giovanni draws upon popular culture and contemporary turns of phrase. Here she throws up her hands and “resigns” from the everyday business of acting like a responsible, mature person, giving herself up entirely to the silliness and wonder of being in love
.

Nikki Giovanni

I
love you

because the Earth turns round the sun

because the North wind blows north

sometimes

because the Pope is Catholic

and most Rabbis Jewish

because winters flow into springs

and the air clears after a storm

because only my love for you

despite the charms of gravity

keeps me from falling off this Earth

into another dimension

I love you

because it is the natural order of things

I love you

like the habit I picked up in college

of sleeping through lectures

or saying I'm sorry

when I get stopped for speeding

because I drink a glass of water

in the morning

and chain-smoke cigarettes

all through the day

because I take my coffee Black

and my milk with chocolate

because you keep my feet warm

though my life a mess

I love you

because I don't want it

any other way

I am helpless

in my love for you

It makes me so happy

to hear you call my name

I am amazed you can resist

locking me in an echo chamber

where your voice reverberates

through the four walls

sending me into spasmatic ecstasy

I love you

because its been so good

for so long

that if I didn't love you

I'd have to be born again

and that is not a theological statement I am pitiful in my love for you

The Dells tell me Love

is so simple

the thought though of you

sends indescribably delicious multitudinous

thrills throughout and through-in my body

I love you

because no two snowflakes are alike

and it is possible

if you stand tippy-toe

to walk between the raindrops

I love you

because I am afraid of the dark

and can't sleep in the light

because I rub my eyes

when I wake up in the morning

and find you there

because you with all your magic powers were

determined that

I should love you

because there was nothing for you but that

I would love you

I love you

because you made me

want to love you

more than I love my privacy

my freedom my commitments and responsibilities

I love you 'cause I changed my life

to love you

because you saw me one friday

afternoon and decided that I would

love you

I love you I love you I love you

 

Helpless =
Try reading this poem as if you're someone swept away by the silliness and sensation of pure infatuation. Like Billy Collins (
page 1
), Giovanni has written a litany of things that might not make sense to someone who's not in love
.

 

“Love Is So Simple” =
Title of a 1968 song by the Dells, a soul group best known for the 1956 hit “Oh. What a Night.”

 

LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS

Love is optimistic, even when there's little reason for optimism. These two lyrics from Elizabethan England make the best of bad situations
.

 

Jest Fooling

Feste, the court jester to Countess Olivia in Shakespeare's play, sings this even though the palace is officially in mourning and everyone is supposed to be walking around with long faces. It's meant to be sung to music, unlike most of the love poems in this book; the original tune was probably a traditional melody
.

'Tis not hereafter =
A frequent theme of love poetry is to enjoy love while you can, as expressed in the classical motto “carpe diem” (seize the day)
.

William Shakespeare

O
mistress mine, where are you roaming?

O, stay and hear, your true-love's coming,

That can sing both high and low.

Trip no further, pretty sweeting;

Journeys end in lovers meeting,

Every wise man's son doth know.

What is love? 'Tis not hereafter;

Present mirth hath present laughter;

What's to come is still unsure.

In delay there lies no plenty,

Then come kiss me sweet and twenty,

Youth's a stuff will not endure.

Michael Drayton

N
othing but no and I, and I and no,

How falls it out so strangely you reply?

I tell ye, fair, I'll not be answered so,

With this affirming no, denying I.

I say, I love, you sleightly answer, I:

I say, you love, you pule me out a no:

I say, I die, you echo me with I:

Save me, I cry, you sigh me out a no;

Must woe and I have nought but no and I?

No I am, if I no more can have;

Answer no more, with silence make reply,

And let me take myself what I do crave,

Let no and I, with I and you be so:

Then answer no and I, and I and no.

 

There's “Yes! Yes!” in Your Ayes

Drayton's sonnet plays with a Petrarchan tradition in which the beloved is a cruel mistress who torments the lover by refusing him. Here, though, a pun provides the poet with cause for optimism
.

Sleightly =
Misleadingly
.

Pule =
Whimper
.

 

“But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be.”

—Luke 1:29

GOOD MORNING AND GOOD NIGHT

Love in the abstract is well and good, but, as songwriters Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson remind us, “Ain't nothing like the real thing, baby.” Perhaps that's why poets spend their days thinking about love and pondering its mysteries—mysteries that tend to reveal themselves only under cover of darkness or in the clear light of dawn
.

 

Troth =
Good faith
.

Country pleasures =
Wealthy urban families sometimes sent infants off to “wet nurses” in rural areas
.

Snorted =
Snored
.

Seven sleepers =
Legendary early Christian martyrs who fled to a cave where, like Rip van Winkle, they fell asleep and awakened after years had passed, thinking it only a night's sleep
.

Each hath one =
The lovers' worlds are united by possessing each other
.

John Donne

I
wonder by my troth, what thou, and I

Did, till we loved? were we not weaned till then?

But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?

Or snorted we in the seven sleepers' den?

'Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be.

If ever any beauty I did see,

Which I desired, and got, 'twas but a dream of thee.

And now good morrow to our waking souls,

Which watch not one another out of fear;

For love, all love of other sights controls,

And makes one little room, an every where.

Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,

Let maps to others, worlds on worlds have shown,

Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.

My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,

And true plain hearts do in the faces rest,

Where can we find two better hemispheres

Without sharp north, without declining west?

What ever dies, was not mixed equally;

If our two loves be one, or, thou and I

Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.

 

Awakenings

John Donne (1572–1613) lived about the same time as Shakespeare (1564–1616). His poems shake up the abstract conventions of Elizabethan love poetry by using striking images from real life (such as a flea or a compass or, as here, waking up in bed with one's lover) to anchor poems about universal themes in particular details
.

Good morrow =
Good morning (a salutation)
.

Declining west =
During the Dark Ages, the Byzantine, or eastern Roman Empire, was thought to be the center of a world that became more barbaric the farther west you went
.

Mixed equally =
A balance of the “bodily humors” was considered essential to life in classical medicine
.

None can die =
Elizabethans often punned to “die” to mean both death and sexual climax. Here, the arousal will go on forever
.

 

A Dark and Stormy Night

The reclusive Emily Dickinson imagines this night us a storm at sea outside her room, and what it would be like to share her room with a lover. Within the safe Edenic harbor of passionate love, wind and thunder become oddly comforting
.

Luxury =
Lust and excess
.

Emily Dickinson

W
ild Nights—Wild Nights!

Were I with thee

Wild Nights should be

Our luxury!

Futile — the Winds —

To a Heart in port—

Done with the Compass—

Done with the Chart!

Rowing in Eden—

Ah, the Sea!

Might I but moor—Tonight—