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“Love After Love,” by Derek Walcott.

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I stole this poem from today’s April Is, because it really spoke to me. Because I’m single, and I’m mostly happy with that but sometimes I can’t help feeling as if I shouldn’t be, as if I’m not supposed to be whole if I’m not in a relationship. (Or as if I shouldn’t be writing romance novels! I’ve actually had a couple of people ask me about that, and I never know what to say, other than that I think love is great and I love writing about it, even if I don’t happen to be in love with anyone at this particular moment in time.) And because I try to like myself, and I’ve been having a little trouble with that recently. Not because I’ve been doing Evil Things Wot I’m Ashamed Of, or anything. Just because I’ve been feeling kind of stressed and insecure.

Are any of you Adam Lambert fans? I have a really great idea for tie-in merchandise. It would be an Adam Lambert plushie, and it would have one of those pull-ties with a ring on the end. And when you pulled it it would say things like “Just remember, you are not alone,” and “Thanks for loving me, ’cause you’re doing it perfectly,” and “It’s okay to be confused about your life,” and other heartwarming lyrics and quotes. How comforting would that be? Adam Lambert thinks you are great just the way you are!

If any of you know his publicist, feel free to pass along my idea…

“Fiveness,” by Sibelan Forrester.

I speak of beauty sharpened to a point:
Da Vincian figures, angels in the sphere.
It’s Aphrodite’s number, lingering
code of the body – stretch from palm to heel.

I am so taken with the way you move,
no frozen image can approximate –
only wind in branches, only slow
and gracious rays through interrupting clouds…

A long elastic curve, but interspersed
with a moment’s hesitation – so.
Each line tends to the next one. Spread
your fingers wide so I can hand you this

sweet ripened fruit, and if you missed
its petals several weeks ago, we may
find the same mystery sliced from the side –
stars and roses, love. Apples and pears.

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This one is by my college Russian professor! Isn’t it great? She was (and still is, of course) incredibly cool—she played the guitar and led Russian folksinging, and also taught a seminar about translation that I really enjoyed. Here are a few quotes from that class that I just found in an old notebook:

SIBELAN, ON MAKING CHOICES IN POETRY: “People read it, and they’re either moved or they’re kind of irritated.” This expresses my experience of poetry SO WELL.

DRYDEN, IN THE PREFACE TO HIS TRANSLATION OF CHAUCER: “Chaucer, I confess, is a rough diamond, and must first be polished before he shines. I deny not likewise, that, living in our early days of poetry, he writes not always of a piece, but sometimes mingles trivial things with those of greater moment.” This is exactly the sort of 18th and 19th century obsession with “good taste” and “elegance” and “speaking seriously on serious subjects” that kind of traumatized Penelope in In for a Penny.

WILHELM VON HUMBOLDT, INTRODUCTION TO HIS TRANSLATION OF AGAMEMNON, 1816: “And think how our nation has progressed, not just the well-educated among us but the masses as well—even women and children—since the Greeks have been available to our nation’s readers in an authentic and undistorted form.”

SOME SOVIET DIRECTOR, IN HIS MEMOIRS, AS REPEATED BY SIBELAN: “All I ever wanted in life was to have a horse. And do I have a horse? No.”

…Sibelan, if you read this, I also took useful notes, I promise! Anyway, gentle readers, you can find more of her poetry here.

“The Precision” by Linda Gregg.

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Sorry I missed yesterday! Anyway, I like this one, in particular the way it talks about the clarity and quiet of attraction, the way when you’re desperately into someone you see their every movement in perfect focus, almost slow motion.

I’ve got houseguests till Tuesday, but after that be prepared for photos from my signings. And thanks to everyone who showed up–we had great turnout at both our events which was very reassuring for a debut author!

My signing with Gayle Ann Williams, Amy Rench, and Marie-Claude Bourque is in two hours! I think it’s going to be lots of fun.

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The Clod and the Pebble
by William Blake

“Love seeketh not Itself to please,
“Nor for itself hath any care,
“But for another gives its ease,
“And builds a Heaven in Hell’s despair.”

So sang little Clod of Clay
Trodden with the cattle’s feet
But a Pebble of the brook
Warbled out these metres meet:

“Love seeketh only Self to please,
“To bind another to Its delight,
“Joys in another’s loss of ease,
“And builds a Hell in Heaven’s despite.”

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What I like about this poem is that both can be true. I find it interesting that it’s the trodden clod that has the more optimistic version–what is Blake trying to say? Possibly something icky about suffering making us better people, I’m not sure. What do you think?

“Sorry” from “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf” by ntozake shange

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I loved this is high school when I first read it (my favorite part of the play, though, was the story about the girl who read the biography of Toussaint Louverture), and I still love it. I probably love it more now, on account of the guys who have told me “sorry” in between then and now.

“Love Letter” by Sylvia Plath.

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I really like the image of love as an awakening of hitherto-unknown aspects of yourself.

This would seem to be another love poem that’s more about the poet than the loved one, but for some reason this one doesn’t bug me. Is it just because it’s by a woman? I don’t think so, but I can’t articulate why it feels different. What do you think?

“When You Are Old” by William Butler Yeats.

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This is another one that’s a teeny bit self-indulgent–wow, Yeats, you were the only person to love Maud Gonne for who she really was, huh? But what I love about it is that it’s not explicitly a poem about how she’ll be sorry she didn’t love him back. It’s rather a poem about the sadness of love ending, and life going on without it. Let’s compare it to the poem it was based on, “Quand vous serez bien vieille” by Pierre Ronsard. This translation is by Anthony Weir, you can read it in the original French here.

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Yeah, I’m willing to cut Yeats some slack, seeing as how his poem is approximately ten million times less obnoxious than that. For another perspective on Yeats and Maud Gonne, see: all of Yeats’ other poetry (sorry, cheap joke, but I am particularly fond of “Among School Children” which has one of the best descriptions of love I’ve ever read), this hilarious comic by Kate Beaton, and presumably in Gonne’s own autobiography, A Servant of the Queen, unless she felt that other aspects of her life might be more important to talk about. It would probably be frustrating to live a long and full life and be a revolutionary and all that and still have everyone just want to talk about how you didn’t marry Yeats even though he asked you five times.

I read this first as a chapter epigraph in Gaudy Night. It’s great, isn’t it?

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from “The Second Brother: an Unfinished Drama,” by Thomas Lovell Beddoes.

…Love? Do I love? I walk
Within the brilliance of another’s thought,
As in a glory. I was dark before,
As Venus’ chapel in the black of night:
But there was something holy in the darkness,
Softer and not so thick as other where;
And, as rich moonlight may be to the blind,
Unconsciously consoling. Then love came,
Like the out-bursting of a trodden star…

This is one of those poems you see so often it feels like cheating to post it, but I love it so much I don’t care. A word of geeky explanation (I was so excited when I learned this in history class and was able to connect it back to the poem!): the metaphors in the third and fourth verse in particular come from the old idea that the earth was at the center of the universe, and the sun, moon, planets, and each star were set in rotating crystalline spheres around it. These spheres were made, not of earth, air, fire, or water, but of a fifth, perfect element called simply “quintessence.” So everything “sublunary,” or below the moon, was physical and terrestrial, while everything past it was celestial.

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A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
by John Donne

As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
“The breath goes now,” and some say, “No,”

So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;
‘Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th’ earth brings harms and fears,
Men reckon what it did and meant;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers’ love
(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
Those things which elemented it.

But we, by a love so much refin’d
That our selves know not what it is,
Inter-assurèd of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion.
Like gold to aery thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two:
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th’ other do;

And though it in the center sit,
Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th’ other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.