#182: Love, don't hate
Dear reader,
I bought myself flowers today, cooked up a delicious roasted beetroot salad for one, and watched The French Dispatch. I’ve been thinking about my demands from love, and understanding of it in the past, how I’ve shown up for myself inside and outside of relationships, and how the most important relationship I want to focus on at this phase of my life is the one I have with myself.
Found myself returning to these words by bell hooks on how to love yourself:
“It is silly, isn’t it, that I would dream of someone else offering to me the acceptance and affirmation I was withholding from myself. This was a moment when the maxim “You can never love anybody if you are unable to love yourself” made clear sense. And I add, “Do not expect to receive the love from someone else you do not give yourself.”
-bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions
TBH, I imagined this newsletter being about how not to fuss about love. The plan was set: to read and find some anti-love poems to share with you all on the 14th of February. But reading different perspectives on love in poetry softened something inside me. Plus, I’d much rather spread love versus hate.
So I decided to be less of a cynic, and find poems on love that felt real and raw. Some were mushy, some pinched, others like the Nikki Giovanni poem made me chuckle. I hope you enjoy reading these poems today:
Poetry Corner: Poems about Love
1. The Quiet World by Jeffrey McDaniel (I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve shared this poem here but it’s a gem)
In an effort to get people to look
into each other’s eyes more,
and also to appease the mutes,
the government has decided
to allot each person exactly one hundred
and sixty-seven words, per day.
When the phone rings, I put it to my ear
without saying hello. In the restaurant
I point at chicken noodle soup.
I am adjusting well to the new way.
Late at night, I call my long distance lover,
proudly say I only used fifty-nine today.
I saved the rest for you.
When she doesn’t respond,
I know she’s used up all her words,
so I slowly whisper I love you
thirty-two and a third times.
After that, we just sit on the line
and listen to each other breathe.
2. Wherever You Are by Jeffrey Harrison (excerpt)
"I hardly
saw anything because I was looking
at you the whole time your face I can't
quite remember then I kissed you
good-bye and you got on a train
and I never saw you again just
one day and one letter long gone
explaining never mind but sometimes
I wonder where you are probably
married with children like me happy
with a new last name a whole life
having nothing to do with that day
but everybody has something like it
a small thing they can't help
going back to and it's not even about
choices and where your life might
have gone but just that it's there
far enough away so it can be seen
as just something that happened almost
to someone else an episode from
a movie we walk out of blinded
back into our lives"
3. Love Elegy in the Chinese Garden, with Koi by Nathan McClain (excerpt)
"I missed what it was to be so dumb
as those koi. I like to think they’re pure,
that that’s why even after the boy’s palms were empty,
after he had nothing else to give, they still kissed
his hands. Because who hasn’t done that—
loved so intently even after everything
has gone? Loved something that has washed
its hands of you? I like to think I’m different now,
that I’m enlightened somehow,
but who am I kidding? I know I’m like those koi,
still, with their popping mouths, that would kiss
those hands again if given the chance. So dumb.”
4. You by Carol Ann Duffy
Uninvited, the thought of you stayed too late in my head,
so I went to bed, dreaming you hard, hard, woke with your name,
like tears, soft, salt, on my lips, the sound of its bright syllables
like a charm, like a spell.
Falling in love
is glamorous hell; the crouched, parched heart
like a tiger ready to kill; a flame’s fierce licks under the skin.
Into my life, larger than life, beautiful, you strolled in.
I hid in my ordinary days, in the long grass of routine,
in my camouflage rooms. You sprawled in my gaze,
staring back from anyone’s face, from the shape of a cloud,
from the pining, earth-struck moon which gapes at me
and I open the bedroom door. The curtains stir. There you are
on the bed, like a gift, like a touchable dream.
5. kidnap poem by Nikki Giovanni
ever been kidnapped
by a poet
if i were a poet
i’d kidnap you
put you in my phrases and meter
you to jones beach
or maybe coney island
or maybe just to my house
lyric you in lilacs
dash you in the rain
blend into the beach
to complement my see
play the lyre for you
ode you with my love song
anything to win you
wrap you in the red Black green
show you off to mama
yeah if i were a poet i’d kid
nap you
6. I Don't Miss It by Tracy K. Smith
But sometimes I forget where I am,
Imagine myself inside that life again.
Recalcitrant mornings. Sun perhaps,
Or more likely colorless light
Filtering its way through shapeless cloud.
And when I begin to believe I haven’t left,
The rest comes back. Our couch. My smoke
Climbing the walls while the hours fall.
Straining against the noise of traffic, music,
Anything alive, to catch your key in the door.
And that scamper of feeling in my chest,
As if the day, the night, wherever it is
I am by then, has been only a whir
Of something other than waiting.
We hear so much about what love feels like.
Right now, today, with the rain outside,
And leaves that want as much as I do to believe
In May, in seasons that come when called,
It’s impossible not to want
To walk into the next room and let you
Run your hands down the sides of my legs,
Knowing perfectly well what they know.
7. One Night on Broadway by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
walking the crowded street—
how many thousands of invitations
to fall in love
8. Proof by Tiana Clark
I once made a diorama from a shoebox
for a man I loved. I was never a crafty person,
but found tiny items at an art store and did my best
to display the beginning bud of our little love,
a scene recreating our first kiss in his basement
apartment, origin story of an eight-year marriage.
In the dollhouse section, I bought a small ceiling fan.
Recreated his black leather couch, even found miniscule
soda cans for the cardboard counters that I cut and glued.
People get weird about divorce. Think it’s contagious.
Think it dirty. I don’t need to make it holy, but it purifies—
It’s clear. Sometimes the science is simple. Sometimes
people love each other but don’t need each other
anymore. Though, I think the tenderness can stay
(if you want it too). I forgive and keep forgiving,
mostly myself. People still ask, what happened?
I know you want a reason, a caution to avoid, but
life rarely tumbles out a cheat sheet. Sometimes
nobody is the monster. I keep seeing him for the first
time at the restaurant off of West End where we met
and worked and giggled at the micros. I keep seeing
his crooked smile and open server book fanned with cash
before we would discover and enter another world
and come back barreling to this one, astronauts
for the better and for the worse, but still spectacular
as we burned back inside this atmosphere to live
separate lives inside other shadow boxes we cannot see.
I remember I said I hate you once when we were driving
back to Nashville, our last long distance. I didn’t mean it.
I said it to hurt him, and it did. I regret that I was capable
of causing pain. I think it’s important to implicate
the self. The knife shouldn’t exit the cake clean.
There is still some residue, some proof of puncture,
some scars you graze to remember the risk.
Recommended Listening
Links of the Week
Embroidery Art Is Thriving Across India
New piece up in Hyperallergic!
Across India, there has always been a rich tradition of embroidery work, from the humble kantha of West Bengal to the opulent zardosi of Uttar Pradesh. In recent years, a new generation of contemporary artists has been experimenting with embroidery as an art form. Since the pandemic started in India, the needle and thread have become a means of expression and creativity, with beautifully detailed works capturing the lives and worlds of the artist.
“I think if you can take care of yourself, and then maybe try to take care of someone else, that’s sort of how you’re supposed to live.”
-Bill Murray
Take care of yourselves and your loved ones,
Rohini
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That excerpt from "Love Elegy in the Chinese Garden, with Koi" is so beautiful, it sounds so casual I love it! In fact, all poems were lovely and had me mulling. Thank you for this letter!
Loved today’s edition!