Who Loves What

Love. That single word, followed by a period is a complete sentence in and of itself. It is the predicate and an understood (you), as a given command. It is the definition of a universal emotion. It is something we recognize from the time we are wee babes in diapers and booties, and it lives on through our smiles and our tears until we lay down consumed by the earth. It is strictly forbidden and also a passion unbridled. It is the greatest heartache and the greatest ecstasy. It is the thing we claim to need the most and hurts the worst when we do not have it. Michael Bolton says it is ‘A Wonderful Thing,” and The Beatles claim it is “All You Need”. It is power and glory in only four letters and a dot. It is love.
When instructed to come up with an anthology of poems, I immediately decided to focus on the theme of love. Because it is so powerful and so broad, I figured I could not go wrong. To narrow it down though and give the collection a concentrated effort, I choose to compile a set from all different times of life. We learn about love at such a young age, and it plays such a huge role in our lives throughout time. I want to try to bring the aspect to the table of the question of what love means to us at each stage of life. I have chosen nursery rhymes to signify our innocence and novel idea of love as babies. I chose sonnets and a few other poems to show relevance of how our love grows exponentially into our youth. I have also added a few songs into the mix because essentially, songs are poems, just sung instead of read. I feel like many lyrical artists have a great understanding of what love is and what it means to us through our lives.
When we are young pups merely out of the womb, we are “goo-goo” and “ga-ga” about nothing other than our parents. They hold us when we cry, feed us when we are hungry, rock us to sleep at night and take our fevers away. These magnificent beings at the center of our universe are supposed to show us unconditional and unimaginable love. At this point, we have learned nothing other than hugging and kissing and squeezing when we feel scared. All of this we do only with our parents for the first good time we are on this planet. That is really all we know. We know that love means we get fed, diapers get changed, and we get toys and a warm blanket at night. I have included a Mother Goose nursery rhyme entitled “My Love” as the sequential piece involved in our very young childhood. In this rhyme, the focus of the attention is on the “love”, in which essentially the mother is returning home from the market with food for baby.
James Hunt expresses another side of youthful lust in love in his poem, “Jenny Kissed Me.” He is in the essence of the feelings he has for Jenny. He seems to care about nothing else except that Jenny kissed him. He rants on about his growing up and growing old, but wants it to also not be forgotten that “Jenny Kissed Me.” This is a true sign of our young friend, “puppy love.” When we are teenagers, at the brink of our real life experiences, we do not care about getting into trouble at school. We still want to pass that note that says, “I think you are cute.” We do not mind getting grounded for staying out too late, because it was all worth that one last kiss. Our love is no longer contingent upon whether or not our parents feed us. It has now reorganized itself around whether or not they let us borrow the car to go on that date Friday night.
As we get a bit older, our sights and direction of our feelings change. We begin to notice friends of the opposite sex on the playground. We begin simulating roles of hero and damsel in distress. This occurs when we are on the playground at school, up until we reach our pubescent years on into sexual maturity. I chose a sonnet from William Shakespeare to display this concept of love. In his “Sonnet 138”, he goes into detail about how his love claims to be made of the truth. Yet, he knows this is not so. They are both young, but he claims to know more than she gives him credit for. “Love’s best habit is in seeming trust.” This is something we learn early on in our romantic relationships. Many a time, when the young think they love, the infatuation of it all takes over and causes heartbreak and despair. From all of our youthfulness and woes, we learn that a most demanding and sometimes irreconcilable piece of the love puzzle is trust.
As we age, we become more dynamic in our ideas of love. We now have pets and friends and children, all lf which we cherish dearly. We are finding new ways of expressing our desires and communicating our feelings. We invoke the right to be publicly affectionate because now we understand how to display it in an acceptable manner. We are watching our parents grow old, either with their first, second or third partners, or alone. We see how being happy with someone completes their soul, and how being alone can be miserable and lonely. We are reaching our prime age and understanding that a partner in life is more fulfilling than continuing to try to impress our parents and their friends. We may settle for someone not quite worthy of us, but we still need to feel whole. It is human nature to need to be accepted and a part of something or someone else. “To My Dear and Loving Husband,” by Anne Bradstreet is a poem about this connection between a husband and wife. When we come to that point in our life when we feel so completely enveloped in another person, so much so that we want to share everything we have with them, we truly appreciate what love really is. At this point, it is being sincere and frank with someone you honestly feel you cannot live without. I accept the idea that at this point, we can find our soul mate, but only if we have had eye opening experiences allowing us to realize when they walk into our hearts.
When we reach our later years, only then do we attempt to interpret the full spectrum of love which we have experienced. We remember what it was like to feel giddy and have butterflies in our stomach, yet now that is only a memory. We have grown as separate people, yet we grew up together. We reminisce about the times of old, and encourage our offspring to fall in and out of the experiences we once deemed worldly. We remind ourselves of some of the great moments we captured in a frame, and at night we lay down next to our love to sweetly dream. One of the most wondrous aspects of love is the possibility that when we wake up, we may lose it. Edgar Alan Poe drowns without his love, “Annabel Lee.” In this poem, he claims they are young wife and husband, and jealousy and envy rips her from his love and kills her so that he must go on living without her. I ask that we remember all we must have learned about love before we can truly feel the real pain it involves. To be the deepest and most immeasurably in love, you must find and cherish that person, not the one you can live with, but the one you cannot live without.
So from birth to death we encompass the emotion, the feeling and the idea, behind love. We start as babes loving only what we know. As we grow up and older, we learn so much more and accept the changes in our heads and our hearts. We change places with our parents and become parents to them as the cycle continues. We grow out of our rhymes and into our sonnets, hoping that we never have to experience the undying pain of the dying “Annabel Lee.” Without this depth, this twinge in our heart, our soul would not be complete. We could live without material things, and we could survive out on the streets. “Love is All You Need.”

“My Love”
-Mother Goose

Saw ye aught of my love a-coming from the market? A peck of meal upon her back, A babby in her basket;Saw ye aught of my love a-coming from the market?


“Jenny Kissed Me”
-James Henry Leigh Hunt

Jenny kissed me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in;
Time, you thief, who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in!
Say I’m weary, say I’m sad,
Say that health and wealth have missed me,
Say I’m growing old, but add,
Jenny kissed me.

“Sonnet 138”
-William Shakespeare
When my love swears that she is made of truthI do believe her though I know she lies,That she might think me some untutored youthUnlearned in the world's false subtleties.Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,Although she knows my days are past the best,Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue;On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed.But wherefore says she not she is unjust,And wherefore say not I that I am old?O, love's best habit is in seeming trust,And age in love loves not to have years told.Therefore I lie with her, and she with me,And in our faults by lies we flattered be.

“To My Dear And Loving Husband”
-Anne Bradstreet

If ever two were one, then surely we.
If ever man were lov’d by wife, then thee.
If ever wife was happy in a man,
Compare with me, ye women, if you can.
I prize thy love more than whole Mines of gold
Or all the riches that the East doth hold.
My love is such that Rivers cannot quench,
Nor ought but love from thee give recompetence.
Thy love is such I can no way repay.
The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray.
Then while we live, in love let’s so persever
That when we live no more, we may live ever.


“It Is At Moments After I Have Dreamed”
-E. E. Cummings

it is at moments after i have dreamed
of the rare entertainment of your eyes,
when(being fool to fancy)i have deemed

with your peculiar mouth my heart made wise;
at moments when the glassy darkness holds

the genuine apparition of your smile
(it was through tears always)and silence moulds
such strangeness as was mine a little while;

moments when my once more illustrious arms
are filled with fascination, when my breast
wears the intolerant brightness of your charms:

one pierced moment whiter than the rest

—turning from the tremendous lie of sleep
I watch the roses of the day grow deep.


“All You Need is Love”
-John Lennon, The Beatles

Love, Love, Love. Love, Love, Love. Love, Love, Love.
There's nothing you can do that can't be done. Nothing you can sing that can't be sung. Nothing you can say but you can learn how to play the game. It's easy.
Nothing you can make that can't be made. No one you can save that can't be saved. Nothing you can do but you can learn how to be you in time. It's easy.
All you need is love. All you need is love. All you need is love, love. Love is all you need.
All you need is love. All you need is love. All you need is love, love. Love is all you need.
Nothing you can know that isn't known. Nothing you can see that isn't shown. Nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be. It's easy.
All you need is love. All you need is love. All you need is love, love. Love is all you need.
All you need is love (Paul: All together, now!) All you need is love. (Everybody!) All you need is love, love. Love is all you need (love is all you need).
Yee-hai! Oh yeah! She loves you, yeah yeah yeah. She loves you, yeah yeah yeah.


“Love is A Wonderful Thing”
-Michael Bolton
Birds fly, they don't think twiceThey simply spread their wingsThe sun shines, it don't ask whyOr what the whole thing meansThe same applies to you and IWe never question thatSo good, it's just understoodAin't no conjectureJust a matter of fact[Chorus:]Love is a wonderful thingMake ya smile through the pouring rainLove is a wonderful thingI'll say it again and againTurn your world into one sweet dreamTake your heart and make it singLove, love is a wonderful thingThe only thing a river knowsIs runnin' to the seaAnd every spring when a flower growsIt happens naturallyThe same magic when you're in my armsNo logic can defineDon't know why, just feels so rightI only know it happens every time[Chorus]Oh when the cold wind blowsI know you're gonna be there to warm meThat's what keeps me goin'And our sweet love will keep on growin'[Chorus]Love is a wonderful, wonderful thingLove is a wonderful, wonderful thingIt's what makes honey taste sweetIt's what makes your life complete

“Annabel Lee”
-Edgar Allan Poe

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of ANNABEL LEE;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea:
But we loved with a love that was more than love—
I and my ANNABEL LEE;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful ANNABEL LEE;
So that her highborn kinsmen came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me—
Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my ANNABEL LEE.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we—
Of many far wiser than we—
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE.

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE;
And the stars never rise but I see the bright eyes
Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride,
In her sepulchre there by the sea—
In her tomb by the side of the sea.

Coal

Audre Lorde writes about being black, black as coal. He starts the poem "Coal" with the word "I", letting you know he is using the coal as a reference to himself. He then moves on to talk about words as kinds of "open". These different things, words, are judged and heard a certain was depending on what color the person is that says it. His whole first paragraph describes this idea, saying that words are "colored by who pays what for speaking." "Some words are open like diamond on glass windows." This he means, is a word that rings our and cuts. Diamonds are the only jewel strong enough to cut glass. Then he says there are "words like stapled wagers in a perforated book." You use your words like writing checks. You choose your word, use it and then it is torn out of your book. What is left is just the stub. It's been ripped out and all that remains is a jagged edge like "an ill-pulled tooth." An ill-pulled tooth is very painful. Some words "live in my throat." He means he does not say them. Words he wants to say, but he never lets them come out to "know the sun". Some words "explode through my lips" without him really wanting them to come out. Then he speaks of the word love, "another kind of open." Take this word and make it a jewel in the sun. Make his word have as much pain on someone else as it does on him deep down inside.

Ars Poetica

I choose "Ars Poetica" by Archibald MacLeish to discuss two poetic elements about today. I really enjoy this poem. I would like to discuss the language used and the rhythm he captured in his lines.

The language, first and foremost, is excellent. he uses descriptive words and lots of verbs to paint the picture of his imagination for you. He uses several adjectives that make you stop and think with each line, such as "Dumb", "silent", "night-entangled". I think his diction is brilliant as well. The poem has a very casual diction to me. I read it as if I'm sitting in a lecture given by Robin William's character in Dead Poet's Society. He chooses words that really examine the beingness of the poem, and repeats a few lines to reinforce his point.

The rhythm he uses for this poem is very effective. It contains short, to the point lines, and a great set up. Some lines begin with only two or so words, and make the reader feel the need to take a pause before going on to the next line. This created a great ambiance in the descriptions he provided. I really enjoyed it.

Holy Thursday vs. The Divine Image

William Blake wrote “Holy Thursday” and “The Divine Image” in the late eighteenth century when war and political change were at extremes in the Americas. Being from England, William Blake knew about governmental treachery and religious ultimatums. A large focus for Blake’s poems was his religion. Many people turned to Christianity during difficult times, because it gave them hope. When the world seems to throw every problem available at someone’s door, that person needs a reason to go on living and breathing. People turned to religion because Christians believe there is some thing, some place, out there that is bigger and better than any of them, and that if they endure the pain and suffering of life with a strong head, they one day will reap the rewards of this place called heaven. Blake used imagery in these two poems to talk about the same ideas, yet to portray them in a totally distinct way. The way he describes Jesus Christ and heaven are similar, but his images of children change throughout. The style in which a poem is written can have a great effect on the way the audience reads it. Blake does not stick with a single, simple rhythm. He gives us variety and depth to express himself through his words.

One aspect these two poems have in common is the idea behind worship and religion. God and heaven play important roles in these two poems by Blake. In “Holy Thursday”, Blake speaks of attending church on Ascension Day, watching the innocent children file in to attend service and learn about their religion. “Harmonious heaven among.” In this line fragment, he talks about sitting in church as if it is comparable to actually sitting in heaven. He described the children’s songs to heaven as being “raised” up, as in an offering. Usually hymns and songs at church are sung as a way of communicating with God and Jesus Christ. The children are seen as angels singing to God, as seen in his passage, “lest you drive an angel from your door.” In all these ways, William Blake makes it very clear that he values the church and worships God and Jesus.

Comparatively, Jesus is “The Divine Image” in Blake’s eyes. He explains that everyone that prays, does so for mercy, pity, peace and love. “Mercy, Pity, Peace and Love, Is Man, his child and care.” This line comes right after he calls God, “our father dear.” He believes that any man that prays, no matter where from, what religion or background, must love Jesus. If they pray for these four symbols, they are praying to God and his human form, his son, “The Divine Image” of Jesus Christ.

The style he writes with varies in these two poems. Blake changes up his wording, lines and rhyming rhythm to cater to his poems. In both of these poems, he uses exact rhymes like “snow” and “flow” as well as approximate rhymes like “clime” and “divine.” In “Holy Thursday”, every other line, separated by commas, rhymes either exactly or approximately. This can make the poem seem to flow better and make it easier to give a rhythm to when reading it out loud. When each line rhymes, the poem feels more like it reads itself. These systematic set ups are more orderly and work well with a traditional poetic audience.

In contrast, “The Divine Image” has a much different set up. Since the theme of the poem seems to be the ideas behind praying to and communicating with Jesus or God, this poem has a song-like look and feel. The rhythm is quite different from “Holy Thursday”, as it consists of five small paragraphs with short lines, and only four lines per paragraph. The other, is three paragraphs with two short sentences put together on each line which conform to the rhyme. Not all the lines rhyme in “The Divine Image.” It looks like lyrics from a song, perhaps a work that Blake looked at as an offering to God and Jesus showing his devotion.

Blake’s use of imagery and descriptive words are what make his poems so intriguing. These two poems differ in the way he describes things though. In “Holy Thursday”, the children and church seem to be portrayed more graceful and colorful. He describes the children as “red & blue & green,” these “flowers of London town.” They all “flow” into the church on this fortieth day after Easter, this Holy Thursday. Then he changes his metaphor and uses images of lambs being herded, as the “multitudes” of children all taking their seats in the church. Another few words he uses for describing the children are pity and angels. So, with all of these descriptions, the images that are seen just representing children are flowers, a river, pity, innocence, angels, and herds of lambs.

In The Divine Image however, Blake does an exquisite job of attaching a solid human feature to a moral value or idea for his image focus.
“Mercy has a human heart,
Pity, a human face,
And Love, the human form divine,
And Peace, the human dress.”
In all these ideas, he speaks of something human, yet pins it to this idea he has already expressed that “The Divine Image” is just the human behind God. Perhaps this divine image he has laid out for us is the image we have come to know as the body of Jesus Christ.

Blake uses religion, imagery and rhythmic style to create his own distinct and creative poems. It is obvious, through reading these two works, that he was a religious man. He viewed children as angels from heaven as well as innocent little lambs. He used great descriptive words to illustrate his poetic ideas and wrote with a flavorful style. Some poems always rhyme and some do not. That does not mean it is any less poetic. A good audience for a poet like Blake, is one of open mind, rhythmic ear and caring heart. To read Blake, one cannot help but become a good member of his audience.

Line Breakage

Poets writing in Free Verse, pretty much have the freedom to stop a line at any time and begin the next whenever. Some of the time, the lines are totally different in word count and length. Sometimes it makes the poems very difficult to understand and read in a "flowy", "poetic" way.

When I think of poems, I think of rhyming words at the end of each line. Little is that the case now in the free verse writing. I feel like poets tend to end lines with the end of each thought. For example, with Ezra Pound's "In a Station of the Metro," even though it is only two lines long, the poem is a whole idea or single image.

The first line is sort of the start of the thought. The second line is then the completed description of the thought. There is nothing more to it than just that. The line ends with a comma, where I would assume there is a pause, a breath, a break in the reading. This, to me is more poetic and flows better than one like Gertrude Stein's stanzas. I feel like hers were almost made to look a certain way, instead of sound a certain way.

Yeats Changing of the Times

Over the fifteen or twenty years between Yeats' poems Adam's Curse and An Irish Airman Foresees His Death the subject of his writing changes dramatically. In the beginning, with Adam, Yeats writes about poets and how their work is not viewed like most other professions of the time. Although it may "take us hours", "stitching and unstitching", it is still better to go scrub floors or be a banker or schoolmaster. The women see their chore in live as "labour(ing) to be beautiful." A man, a poet, truly wants to love a woman with the ways of old, through romance and poems. Eventually though, love dies out. Eventually we all end up as lonely and hollow. This is the tale of a normal course of life and love, for a common man and woman.

In An Irish Airman Foresees His Death though, Yeats tells it how it is for the time period. His friend's son chose to serve his country and fight for freedom, and in doing so, gave up his life. He talks of being able to really please no one, not the enemy or the people for whom he fights, and feels like he wasted his previous time as well as the years he would have had if he had not chosen to fly. Basically in this time period, people were struggling to industrialize, and in doing so, many people had to leave their families and happy homes to work and serve in ways they may not have wanted to. In this instance, it seems as though this was an honorable thing for this young Irishman though.

Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson was a truly underrated poet for many years. Like many artists, her work was not fully appreciated until far after her death. Like many in the Romantic period, Dickinson stretched out and used her poems in a much different light than tradition called for. She used her poems to truly express herself and talk about her life. She used them to write about feelings and people she held very dear to her.

Her unusual use of dashes and capitalization added zest to her works. It seems she was fascinated with mysticism and mannerism, and her failure to conform became accepted by later generations of readers. A lot of her published works can be almost sung to the tunes of songs. Her language flows and smoothly leaves the tongue.

I am not sure what else I can say to reach my 250 word minimum except that I enjoyed her poems.