Love Poems

[Saffron]

It seems to me it is time to make a post on this thread. I've read Stephen Dunn before, but tonight is the first time I've read this one. The second stanza really tickled me.


The Kiss
by Stephen Dunn


She pressed her lips to mind.
—a typo

How many years I must have yearned
for someone’s lips against mind.
Pheromones, newly born, were floating
between us. There was hardly any air.

She kissed me again, reaching that place
that sends messages to toes and fingertips,
then all the way to something like home.
Some music was playing on its own.

Nothing like a woman who knows
to kiss the right thing at the right time,
then kisses the things she’s missed.
How had I ever settled for less?

I was thinking this is intelligence,
this is the wisest tongue
since the Oracle got into a Greek’s ear,
speaking sense. It’s the Good,

defining itself. I was out of my mind.
She was in. We married as soon as we could.

[oblivion]

I was out of my mind. She was in.


Wonderful! Love it!

[lady of shallot]

"The first time I felt madly in love with a man I was struck by his smell. I couldn't get enough. After the first time I was with with him, I could smell him all the next day on my skin. I must have looked like a fool, smelling my self all day long!"

Saffron this actually brought tears to my eyes. A long time ago when a lover left me, my biggest regret was that I had no item of clothing of his. Oh, how I longed for that!

Both the poems on this page are wonderful. How have I missed this thread?

Oh love poems. I was once addicted to Stage Love.

[giselle]

This Stephen Dunn poem has so many love images and truths, some painfully true.

"Pheromones, newly born, were floating
between us. There was hardly any air."

Being so in love that one gasps for air - I don't know if pheremones are to blame but I think this is a true and common enough experience in the good/bad way so characteristic of love. Not just a human experience rooted in emotion and physiology but one that captures that occasional intensity of human relationship .. a transcendent, intense relationship experience that changes us forever. Pure magic.

[Saffron]

"The first time I felt madly in love with a man I was struck by his smell. I couldn't get enough. After the first time I was with with him, I could smell him all the next day on my skin. I must have looked like a fool, smelling my self all day long!"

I have had this same experience. Though he is long gone I still think about enjoying his smell.

[Saffron]

One for Valentine's Day --

There is a pain – so utter –
It swallows substance up –
Then covers the Abyss with Trance –
So Memory can step
Around – across – upon it –
As one within a Swoon –
Goes safely – where an open eye –
Would drop Him – Bone by Bone.
—from “599” by Emily Dickinson


oops, no that can't be right. I'll try again, another E.D. This is one of my all time favorites. Gives me an idea! It would be fun if we had a thread where every one could post their own top 10.

Wild nights - Wild nights! (269)

Wild 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 -
In thee!

Ok, make that 3 for Valentine's Day and now we will have covered it pretty well.

The Shirt
by Jane Kenyon

The shirt touches his neck
and smooths over his back.
It slides down his sides.
It even goes down below his belt—
down into his pants.
Lucky shirt.

[lady of shallot]

Was she in love with Henry Thoreau? We just read the wild nights poem the other day. I don't think she had any love life, but certainly imagination. Nice imagry

[Saffron]

Was she in love with Henry Thoreau? We just read the wild nights poem the other day. I don't think she had any love life, but certainly imagination. Nice imagry

I do not believe Emily D was ever in love with Mr. Thoreau. Emily never married and definately had reclusive habits, but no reason to think she never had a lover or two.

[oblivion]

There is a wonderful book on the market called "Lives like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson's Family's Feuds" by Lyndall Gordon. Informative biography which really reads well and makes good use of Emily's poems.

[lady of shallot]

Interestingly enough we had a very nice young waiter at dinner last night who is finishing up his degree at Dartmouth college as an English major with aspirations to be a poet and eventually a professor of English. I posed the Emily D. question to him and he said that very recently there had come to light a "passionate" correspondence between Emily and a publisher but that they had never met.

but no reason to think she never had a lover or two.

But wouldn't there be? Living in Victorian New England (where up until fairly recently contraceptive devices were illegal in CT.) Not only that but living with her family?