{"id":1594,"date":"2025-02-06T23:06:56","date_gmt":"2025-02-07T04:06:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/casit.bgsu.edu\/marblog\/?p=1594"},"modified":"2025-02-07T00:45:06","modified_gmt":"2025-02-07T05:45:06","slug":"craft-corner-the-myriad-faces-of-love-no-8","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/casit.bgsu.edu\/marblog\/craft-corner-the-myriad-faces-of-love-no-8\/","title":{"rendered":"Craft Corner: The Myriad Faces of Love No. 8"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What poetry by Adrienne Rich, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Gerald Stern can teach us about our own hearts and the ways we love.<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Nathan Fako<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Scrapbook<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n
\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

When we think about poetry, our minds probably go to high school Language Arts classes. We get a flash of a Shakespearean sonnet, we feel again the deafening silence as the class struggles to \u201cget\u201d the poem. Or perhaps we think of Neruda, Rumi, or Billy Collins. Mary Oliver. The truth is, I think, that most people don\u2019t spend a lot of time thinking about poetry. Poetry doesn\u2019t pay the water bill or change a diaper. But there are moments in life when poetry becomes the only appropriate food for the heart and soul\u2013falling in love, for example. How do you express the way someone makes your heart explode? Say you\u2019re a teenager again. Maybe you make them a mixtape, or a Spotify playlist. Maybe you even venture to write them a love poem.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the first poetry I wrote to show to others was in the form of love poems for my first girlfriend. I still remember vividly the feeling of pouring myself into those poems\u2013just as vividly as I remember her telling me the poem I gave her didn\u2019t really say what it was trying to, and that I should \u201ctry again.\u201d Well, at least she gave me another chance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So what separates strong love poetry from weak love poetry? We know love is one of the great themes. These are well-tread waters. Think of the bright-eyed Romantics or the ravings of Allen Ginsberg. Everyone, hopefully, has been or will be in love at some point in their lives. And what about platonic love? Love poems of brotherhood, sisterhood, love for the community, the city\u2026 the list of types of love could be endless. Gwendolyn Brooks said real art is that which endures, or something to that effect. A poet, I think, is one particularly suited to discuss love. To question it and its many faces. So here are three poems, by three different poets, and a bit of explication on the ways in which they have loved. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adrienne Rich\u2019s Twenty One Love Poems<\/em><\/strong> <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat kind of beast would turn its life into words?\u201d So begins the seventh of Adrienne Rich\u2019s Twenty One Love Poems.<\/em> This is a series of poems I believe everyone should read for themselves, as they are visceral, full of longing, and intensely crafted. Broadly, Rich uses these poems to invent and examine a type of love that could exist \u201copenly together\u201d\u2013she was gay, fighting for liberation\u2013in a city, among others, where the lovers could be \u201clike trees.\u201d Inevitable. Natural. Throughout the poems Rich\u2019s speaker examines a kind of love \u201cwhere grief and laughter sleep together.\u201d But let\u2019s go back to the seventh poem.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Poem \u201cVII\u201d utilizes a form I have come to know as the interrogation form. Every statement in the poem takes the pose of a question. When we think of love poetry we think of pouring out the pitcher of the heart. Not here! Rich\u2019s speaker turns against their own heart and its actions as though they were enemies. She questions herself, her right to language, and her battle for gay liberation. She writes, of her lover:  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

or, when away from you I try to create you in words,  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

am I simply using you, like a river or a war? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Through this speaker\u2019s interrogation of the self, of the writing self to be more specific, we see the marionette love and language make of us. So while this is a poem about love, in a collection of poems about love, Rich has done something original and enduring. She turns to the self and interrogates it. How dare I turn the subject of my love into an object of my language, she seems to ask. In so doing, Rich brings us into close proximity with the speaker\u2019s psyche. This is the true magic of the poem, and why her collection succeeds where others might fail. Rich\u2019s poems pull us forcefully into a space that is lived in and inhabited entirely by the experience of being in love, with all of its messy questions and ruminations. Here are love poems that don\u2019t proclaim to be the most in love of all, or the most moving. But they command their singularity. So let your love poems take a new shape. Turn a question towards your own heart and follow the poem into a \u201ccountry that has no language,\u201d a poem totally your own, \u201cheroic in its ordinariness.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yusef Komunyakaa\u2019s \u201cAnodyne\u201d<\/strong> <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another approach to love we may be more familiar with is the consideration of the body. Oh how many young hours spent thinking of nothing but the touch of another\u2019s hand in your hand! But what about self-love? In this poem, Komunyakaa, like Rich, turns the lens towards the self. This is a poem which is widely available on the internet\u2013go listen to him read it.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Komunyakaa has spoken about \u201ca poetics of the body\u201d and this is tangible here in \u201cAnodyne.\u201d The lens of the poem moves slowly over the speaker\u2019s body, proclaiming love along its path. He says: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I love my crooked feet <\/p>\n\n\n\n

shaped by vanity & work <\/p>\n\n\n\n

shoes made to outlast <\/p>\n\n\n\n

belief. The hardness <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This poem is in free-verse, and the short lines propel us down along the language. Komunyakaa\u2019s speaker takes his time in consideration of the body, the \u201cquick motor of each breath,\u201d the \u201cbig hands,\u201d and the place it has come from, \u201cthe deep smell \/ of fish & water hyacinth.\u201d  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So as we enter the season of love, Komunyakaa\u2019s piece invites us to extend some of that heart power towards our own bodies. What might that look like, a love letter to yourself?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gerald Stern\u2019s \u201cLet Me Please Look Into My Window\u201d<\/strong> <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, we get to Gerald Stern\u2019s short poem. This is another poem that you can find easily online through a quick search, and it is only ten lines long. While I won\u2019t quote the poem here, I\u2019ll summarize so that I can highlight two devices that it employs for effect. In this poem the speaker longs to return to a time when they lived in New York. They want to look into their window, to take a walk down Broadway and pass sights with which they are familiar.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first device Stern uses is anaphora, the repetition of a phrase. In this poem it occurs at the beginning of a sentence. You may think of the chorus of a song, or a spiritual. The anaphora in Stern\u2019s poem is the phrase \u201cLet me.\u201d This phrase also contains the second device, which I would call a speech act, and that speech act is the appeal. The speaker is repeatedly appealing to someone, in this case the god of memory in their own head or some higher power, saying please let me go back. Let me have that time once more. At the root of an appeal is a desire. In this poem, the desire is fueled by nostalgia for a time past. But the subject of love, interestingly, is not just the past but the city as well.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What might a love poem to a place look like? A neighborhood park you once idled away hours in with your friends after school, a certain booth in the family restaurant where you babysat while your parents worked\u2026 go write the love poem! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What poetry by Adrienne Rich, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Gerald Stern can teach us about our own hearts and the ways… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1598,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-craft-corner"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/casit.bgsu.edu\/marblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/casit.bgsu.edu\/marblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/casit.bgsu.edu\/marblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casit.bgsu.edu\/marblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casit.bgsu.edu\/marblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1594"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/casit.bgsu.edu\/marblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1594\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1601,"href":"https:\/\/casit.bgsu.edu\/marblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1594\/revisions\/1601"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casit.bgsu.edu\/marblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/casit.bgsu.edu\/marblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casit.bgsu.edu\/marblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casit.bgsu.edu\/marblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}