Category Archives: love

yes!



My friend Erin inaugurated The Summer of YES and I’m following suit.  The basic premise is to say YES to whatever opportunities the universe offers (a practice that I endorse wholeheartedly).  So in that spirit, I’m committing to doing two YES-type of things everyday while I’m traveling in Europe.  First of all, I’ll make sure to say YES to trying a new food at least once per day.  And second, I’ll say YES to doing one new thing everyday that I either haven’t done before, or that scares me.  This will not be the same kind of trip-to-Europe-with-the-family with a strict itinerary and a list of ‘must-do’ tourist attractions–although I’ve enjoyed each of those, this is going to be my first venture abroad sans family and sans touristy expectations!  Instead, I’m going to let my travels challenge and provoke me in new ways, and I’ll spend some time touring without a firm plan of where I’ll even end up that night and just see what adventures happen along the way…

It’s my intention to report daily on Facebook and on Twitter, and I’d love to have you follow along.  I’ll probably not be blogging much (I’m saying NO to bringing a laptop along and NO to being tethered to the Internet), but there’ll be a few posts in the queue so things don’t go totally dark around here while I’m gone…

guilty pleasures…

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One of my favorite guilty pleasures is perusing the poetry and interviews in The Paris Review.  I don’t remember how or why I began reading it, but once I did I was hooked.  Recently I was going through some poetry in the online archives and came across this interview with writer Shirley Hazzard.  I especially enjoy what she says about poetry:

Poetry has been the longest pleasure of my life. It literally and figuratively saved my life, and enabled me to live inwardly. I do not know how people manage without it…

Vladimir Nabokov told his American students that they must saturate themselves in the poetry of their language, poetry in English, in order to develop the ear. This seems to me the most valuable advice one could give to readers or writers. Of course, he did not mean that this should be done with a “purpose” in mind, as if to exploit the power and beauty of great art. Accessibility to expressive language will not come that way. It is an act of love, with implicit humility, and must develop itself. So much of this is intuitive, and intuition itself must be developed from an early age if it is not to languish. Our era of interpretations and explanations and the piling up of convoluted lingo in the academic world–the self-gratification of many a “close reading,” the psycho-sociological overlaying and, often, undermining that commentators apply to works of genius–has been inimical to the nurturing of intuitive affinity and understanding. Much of that arises, I think, from a modern fear of immediacy and of the loss of the illusion of control. Housman’s reference to the hairs rising at the back of one’s neck as one reads a poem remains a test of quality. Such response is individual and cannot merely be generalized, dismantled, controlled.

I love that feeling of “the hairs rising at the back of one’s neck” from poetry.  I know that sensation all too well.  And it’s what keeps me coming back for more.

and it seemed at once they’d fallen in love…

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I came upon these white peonies at the market yesterday, their heads nearly as big as my own and their fragrance so potent. They found their way into my basket and into my living room (and into my viewfinder)…The poem below is a favorite from a dear friend, one that I’ve had pinned on the bulletin board in my kitchen for quite a long time.

Peonies

Heart transplants my friend handed me:

four of her own peony bushes

in their fall disguise, the arteries

of truncated, dead wood protruding

from clumps of soil fine-veined with worms.

“Better get them in before the frost.”

And so I did, forgetting them

until their June explosion when

it seemed at once they’d fallen in love,

had grown two dozen pink hearts each.

Extravagance, exaggeration,

each one girl on her first date,

excess perfume, her dress too ruffled,

the words he spoke to her too sweet–

but he was young; he meant it all.

And when they could not bear the pretty

weight of so much heart, I snipped

their dew-sopped blooms; stuffed them in vases

in every room like tissue boxes

already teary with self-pity.

~Mary Jo Salter

a great lover…

pale pink rose

A friend shared the poem below on my Facebook page recently, and it literally left me breathless as I read (note: I’ve made a few changes here to make it a bit more female-positive).

A few days ago I was having a thoughtful chat with another friend and it struck me how hard my life has often been–in that I’ve had to bend and alter my path because of situations beyond my control.  So many of my wishes and desires are unfulfilled.  There are so many ‘what ifs’ to my life that I simply can’t pursue because of circumstance.  But despite this, I feel as though I’ve surrendered myself to these restrictions and found even more freedom through doing so.  In large part, I think my ability to surface from a morass is because I simply love life so much, and I find huge pleasure in the smallest of things.  Perhaps that’s the result of having survived so much already, or perhaps it’s simply my nature.  I don’t know.  But it makes me feel buoyant and strong.

The Great Lover
by Rupert Brooke

I have been so great a lover: filled my days
So proudly with the splendour of Love’s praise,
The pain, the calm, and the astonishment,
Desire illimitable, and still content,
And all dear names [wo]men use, to cheat despair,

For the perplexed and viewless streams that bear
Our hearts at random down the dark of life.
Now, ere the unthinking silence on that strife
Steals down, I would cheat drowsy Death so far,
My night shall be remembered for a star

That outshone all the suns of all [wo]men’s days.
Shall I not crown them with immortal praise
Whom I have loved, who have given me, dared with me
High secrets, and in darkness knelt to see

The inenarrable god[dess]head of delight?

Love is a flame;—we have beaconed the world’s night.
A city:—and we have built it, these and I.

An emp[ress]:—we have taught the world to die.
So, for their sakes I loved, ere I go hence,
And the high cause of Love’s magnificence,
And to keep loyalties young, I’ll write those names
Golden for ever, eagles, crying flames,
And set them as a banner, that [wo]men may know,
To dare the generations, burn, and blow
Out on the wind of Time, shining and streaming….
These I have loved:
White plates and cups, clean-gleaming,
Ringed with blue lines; and feathery, faery dust;
Wet roofs, beneath the lamp-light; the strong crust
Of friendly bread; and many-tasting food;
Rainbows; and the blue bitter smoke of wood;
And radiant raindrops couching in cool flowers;
And flowers themselves, that sway through sunny hours,
Dreaming of moths that drink them under the moon;
Then, the cool kindliness of sheets, that soon
Smooth away trouble; and the rough male kiss
Of blankets; grainy wood; live hair that is
Shining and free; blue-massing clouds; the keen

Unpassioned beauty of a great machine;

The benison of hot water; furs to touch;
The good smell of old clothes; and other such—
The comfortable smell of friendly fingers,
Hair’s fragrance, and the musty reek that lingers
About dead leaves and last year’s ferns….
Dear names,
And thousand others throng to me! Royal flames;
Sweet water’s dimpling laugh from tap or spring;
Holes in the ground; and voices that do sing:
Voices in laughter, too; and body’s pain,
Soon turned to peace; and the deep-panting train;
Firm sands; the little dulling edge of foam
That browns and dwindles as the wave goes home;

And washen stones, gay for an hour; the cold

Graveness of iron; moist black earthen mould;
Sleep; and high places; footprints in the dew;
And oaks; and brown horse-chestnuts, glossy-new;
And new-peeled sticks; and shining pools on grass;—
All these have been my loves. And these shall pass.
Whatever passes not, in the great hour,
Nor all my passion, all my prayers, have power
To hold them with me through the gate of Death.
They’ll play deserter, turn with the traitor breath,
Break the high bond we made, and sell Love’s trust

And sacramented covenant to the dust.
—Oh, never a doubt but, somewhere, I shall wake,
And give what’s left of love again, and make

New friends, now strangers….
But the best I’ve known,

Stays here, and changes, breaks, grows old, is blown
About the winds of the world, and fades from brains
Of living [wo]men, and dies.
Nothing remains.

O dear my loves, O faithless, once again
This one last gift I give: that after [wo]men
Shall know, and later lovers, far-removed
Praise you, “All these were lovely”; say, “[S]he loved.”