Love Poetry; J.S. Watts is my guest today

I'm very excited to have  J.S. Watts here today. She's the author of several volumes of poetry and the novel, A Darker Moon.

Love Poetry – Counting The Ways

“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.”

If, instead of ways, you count published love poems, you’ll come to the conclusion that an awful lot of people love an awful lot more people in an amazing variety of ways.

There’s been some beautiful poetry written on the subject of love and an impressive amount of it has developed iconic status within the canon of English language poetry. Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s sonnet “How do I love thee?” is just one such poem. There are also any number of Shakespearian sonnets, though “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?/ Thou art more lovely and more temperate” probably has the edge.

I’ve always had a soft spot for John Donne’s tender song of parting “Sweetest love, I do not go/ For weariness of thee”, but the man wrote a wide range of vibrant love poems, both soulful and carnal, before turning his attention to God. It has been argued that his Holy Sonnets are just more love poems, but with God as the object of adoration, rather than his previous assorted mistresses. Love poetry is a broad genre and there is ample room for the romantic, the raunchy and the religious within it. There is even room for the anti-romantic.

In this category, one of my favourites is Dorothy Parker’s brief but biting “Unfortunate Coincidence”, which opens with the apparently romantic line, “By the time you swear you’re his,” but ends on the telling note, “One of you is lying” – a wisecracking and cleverly jaundiced take on the reality of romantic love. I also can’t help but reference the English language translations of the Roman poet Catullus; like Donne, a writer of both romantic and carnal love poetry. The century is irrelevant. As in our own times, the course of true love did not always flow smoothly back in Catullus’s day,

            “the words of a woman to her ardent lover

              should be written on the wind and the fast-running water.”

Even I’ve been known to write the odd love poem:

Painted Eggs*

            Empty and hollow as a blown egg

            Because you are not here.

            Painting me up in pretty colours

            Can’t disguise my fragility,

            My want of guts.

            Only your presence can provide that;

            Pivot and substance of my universe,

            Big nest.

The poem is a lament on the absence of a loved one and I am not inured to the siren call of romance, but, I confess, my natural sensibilities lean more to Dorothy Parker’s view of things. “Lycanthropist”, a poem from the same collection as “Painted Eggs”, describes an unusual way of breaking free from a failed relationship – “On nights such as this I feel the wolf within me”. Although not poetry, I’m also conscious that the ageless love affair at the heart of my novel, “A Darker Moon”, is a black and complicated thing, not conducive to happy outcomes, but then the novel is a dark, literary fantasy, so it would hardly be appropriate to centre it on a relationship that was all red roses and puppy dogs.

For all my self-proclaimed cynicism, I’m as moved as the next reader by poems such as Philip Larkin’s “Arundel Tomb” (even if the sentiment ascribed to it, isn’t quite what he intended) – “What will survive of us is love” and Tennyson’s “In Memoriam” – a melancholy sequence of poems, lamenting lost love and friendship, but which avows,

                        “’Tis better to have loved and lost

                       Than never to have loved at all.”

So there we have it: a range of forms, styles, subjects and sentiments, but regardless of when these poems were written, humanity’s fascination with love is what fuels them. There are many ways to express love in poetry and many types of love to be expressed, but whether dark and bitter or light and hopeful, it always comes down to our need to be loved.

J.S.Watts

* “Painted Eggs” was first published in the literary magazine “Envoi” and appears in the poetry collection “Cats and Other Myths” by J.S.Watts.

Also by JS Watts:

 
Abe Finchley is a damaged man, an orphan with no roots and no family ties. When he finally meets the woman he has been looking for all his life, he finds not just love and passion, but a dark and violent family history that spans generations into humanity’s deepest past.

Eve is the woman of his dreams; but dream is just another word for nightmare, and Abe knows all about those. Amidst a confused web of lies and secrets, Abe is trying to discover who he is and make sense of what he may become. More than just his future and his new-found love is at stake. When he discovers that he has a brother, a man bound by divine destiny to kill him, Abe is going to have to make a difficult choice. A choice that might redeem the world. A choice that just might destroy it.

A Darker Moon is a dark, psychological fantasy. A mythical tale of light and shadow and the unlit places where it is best not to shine even the dimmest light.

J.S. Watts at  Amazon:

 

Wednesday Poems: Tree

Wednesday, like all days, is a great day for poetry.

People sometimes ask when I began to write. More interesting, I think, is when was the first impulse towards making art? For me, it was an experience I had when I was ten or so. This is the poem I made from that experience:

Lightning behind tree. Image thanks to  Wikimedia commons

Tree

Deep branches the color of silt
against a crescent moon,
darker than the sky,  reflected
in waving silhouette on the bedroom wall.
It towered over the house, swaying
as the wind sang through it,
a lullaby to accompany the owl,
and the distant wail of a catamount--
like a distressed child lost
in the wood beyond the ridge.

I was ten and my limbs ached
toward the window. I pulled them into
the deep pocket of my body, an embryo
ready to be born into the world.

The heavy scent of rain
pulled moisture into the room.
I held it in my lungs
and imagined that the tree held my breath--
a continuing tandem of breath
moving with certainty.

Clouds grew until they covered the moon
and a rumbling began,
like the shake of God's fisted hand
the wind tossed the tops of the tree
the tendrils of my hair.

One drop shattered against the pane,
and another, a caucophony
of drops hitting the window.
Tympani rhythm
melding into a stream of sound
and gathered into the arms
of night and wind and tree.
 

Wednesday Poems: Papa, Dancing

Wednesday, like all days, is a good day for poetry.
I wrote this a long time ago about my younger son after my father had died.

Papa, Dancing

He is in your eyes,my child--
sapphire pools wide with wonder, reflecting the sun--
a thousand fleeting torches, dancing
as he must have danced in the days before
a you or a me,
arms raised to embrace each diminutive ray
filtering through branches to weave forever into ebony,
to sparkle again--
in your eyes.

Wednesday Poems: Sorrow Song

Wednesday, like all days, is a good day for poetry.

This poem was written while sitting at water's edge

Beach at Sunset. Photo by Jon Sullivan.

Sorrow Song

It is enough that a sea of cloud
breathes ceruleun and ochre into earth's body
Enough
that the oak stands with naked arms raised,
a silent psalm in the howl of winter.
Enough
that the ocean genuflects to the beach,
salt cascading like a profusion of tears.
If you are sad, let it be.
Sing your sorrow to the dark water
spill your heart to the pebbles.
Your sorrow is a stone rinsed in swirling eddies,
the water will polish it until it gleams
and then lay it like a diamond at your feet. 

Wednesday Poems: Echo's Song

Wednesday, like all days, is a good day for poetry.

Echo and Narcissus by John William Waterhouse 1903. Wikimedia images

The last Wednesday Poems featured Narcissus. I wrote this as a companion piece. Echo was a nymph in love with Narcissus. Narcissus, in one version of the story, bends too close to the pool of water where he is reflected (he is in love with his own image) and drowns. Here Echo laments his drowning:


Echo's Song

Poor Narcissus, only
a shadow, a silhouette
lost in the shallow puddles of April
Stems of water, cold as stones
kiss the back of your neck

Poor Narcissus, only
a flicker, a reflection
of a single season
Your mirror is broken
into spokes of silver

Poor Narcissus, if only
you could hear me calling
your name, my voice
ripples into circles that weep
into the coolness,
pebbles dancing over loss. 

Wednesday Poems: Narcissus

Wednesday, like any day, is a great day for Poetry.

This week's poem is about Narcissus, who falls in love with his image in a pool of water and then drowns in the pool. Narcissus also refers to daffodils. I tried to combine the two.

Narcissus by Caravaggio. Wikimedia images.

Narcissus

I bend and unbend, flowing
on the green stem of breeze,
seeing my reflection
in  your silver.

All winter I waited inside of darkness
Earth polished me and held me back,
told time in shadow lengths and drifts,
told me secrets.

 I should have known better
than to ask your silent echo for answers
I should have known better
than to stoop too deeply
by your pool.

Wednesday Poems: The Sunday Visit

Wednesday, like all days, is a great day for poetry.




The Sunday Visit

I visit her on Sundays.
The alabaster walls are hushed
and the hush floats down
to the linoleum--
polished clean under the soles
of the nurses' soft white shoes

Her chair frets quietly
as I wheel her to the garden
where spring blooms verdant and new.

I give her a bouquet of forget-me-nots.
She has forgotten my name.
She presses the flowers to her breast
and sings them lullabies.

Wednesday Poems: The Weaver

Wednesday, like all days, is a great day for poetry

My mother was a weaver. After she died, I wrote this in her memory.

This Leesburg loom is similar to the one my mother owned

The Weaver

Before her thoughts began to unravel into a sea of yarn,
past and present warped together into a single fabric,
my mother would spend her Sundays
pushing a shuttle boat across a loom,
turning red and white thread into roses.
Her soft stubbed fingers would play over colors,
light and dark, and recount the world
into her own ordered brilliance--
a story woven in fabric

There is no way to tell this story but with hands,
the way they crafted a life,
and how the craft is passed
mother to daughter
like a thread through Aida cloth--
turning imagination into something that can be held
between finger and thumb,
something that can be smoothed
against your cheek.

Wednesday Poems: Penelope

Wednesday, like all days, is a good day for poetry.

This weeks poem is about Penelope, the long suffering wife of Odysseus in Homer's Odyssey.

Penelope

I am weaving you a coat
from the thread of my tears.
Lovers pass my window,
the cool shadows of their bodies
fall through the doorway,
their soft laughter falls
into the wind.

Every morning I turn
to the clicking loom and make
my longing into substance
Every evening I unravel 
my dark hunger
and look into the broad cap of night--
the warp of stars
where I might find you.

The treetops twist in uneasy sleep
and braid their branches to the sea.
I dream of white sails
billowing into the breaking gold of sunrise
the linen promise of your return.

Wednesday Poem: The Bridge of Sighs

Wednesday, like all days, is a good day for poetry

Today's poem was inspired by the Bridge of Sighs in Venice.

Photo by B. Welleschik. For more info, click on image

The bridge connects the interogation rooms at the Doge's palace with the prison. The view from the bridge's barred windows was the last view of Venice a prisoner would have. It was first called Bridge of Sighs by Lord Byron, who imagined the prisoners would take in the view of beautiful Venice and sigh before being led to a prison cell

The Bridge of Sighs

You crossed it with your heart,
held out in your open palm.
At the top of the arch,
you let your heart flutter
into the shallow water
that wept beneath you.
Your heart became a boat made of paper.
It floated away
passing magnificent palazzo gardens,
flower vendors with their hands covered in roses,
the tower of bells that peeled to the pigeons.

You will never know where your heart landed,
whether it was caught in fragrent lillies,
or by another pair of hands dipping in to meet a reflection.
Or perhaps the water ate slowly at your heart's edge
until, soggy with the water's wet hunger,
it sank below the gondolier's rhythmic paddle.