And being diehard romantics despite our efforts to appear jaded and cynical, we hope that clarity does find you back in love or on your way there again. We hope you share the contentment of the speaker in Amy Lowell's “Decade,” who, ten years into her relationship, feels that her mate leaves her “completely nourished.”
Actually, we hope for even more than that. Yes, it's very nice if your partner is like your “morning bread,” “smooth and pleasant.” It's very “Stability,” and stability is a fine place to be in love. But hey, come on, if he used to burn your mouth with his sweetness, if he used to taste like “red wine and honey,” well, wouldn't it be great to be nourished and to have all that rich flavor bursting back?
Wouldn't it be even more wonderful to have that contented nourishment and the naughty, teasing, hungry deliciousness described in William Carlos Williams's “This Is Just to Say”? The speaker in that poem willy-nilly dares to eat his lover's luscious plums, even though he knows she is saving them for something practical, like breakfast. He doesn't care. He can't help himself. He wants those sweet, cold plums! (which, in case you can't tell, we think symbolize his lover's sexuality). And he knows she'll be charmed by his funny, careless “this is just to say” approach. This is the kind of mate we want after a decade (or longer, or less) of long-term commitment—someone who knows and cares for us intimately but not solemnly, someone who still remembers how to be playfully provocative.
Yes, we're venturing back into ecstasy territory; we know it. Like the speaker in the Williams poem, we just can't help it. We want everyone to be happy in love, despite all its ups and downs or maybe even because of them. Real love can whirl you from the glory of ecstasy into the hell of misery and back again, but that's just how it goes in real life, and aren't we lucky to be part of that dance?
So as you emerge from clarity, no matter where your heart is headed next, be grateful for the chance to love. As Wallace Stevens seems to be saying in his poem “Life Is Motion,” love gives life momentum, helps us move forward, and allows us to be both flesh and air—to be physically grounded on earth but emotionally lifted to the heavens. So get crazy in love. Let yourself swing around like Bonnie and Josie in Stevens's poem, crying, “‘Ohoyaho,/Ohoo’…/ Celebrating the marriage/Of flesh and air.”
Mary Bly
I sit here, doing nothing, alone, worn out by long winter.
I feel the light breath of the newborn child.
Her face is smooth as the side of an apricot,
Eyes quick as her blond mother's hands.
She has full, soft, red hair, and as she lies quiet
In her tall mother's arms, her delicate hands
Weave back and forth.
I feel the seasons changing beneath me,
Under the floor.
She is braiding the waters of air into the plaited manes
Of happy colts.
They canter, without making a sound, along the shores
Of melting snow.
JAMES WRIGHT
Excerpt from “The Ivy Crown”
At our age the imagination
across the sorry facts
lifts us
to make roses
stand before thorns.
Sure
love is cruel
and selfish
and totally obtuse—
at least, blinded by the light,
young love is.
But we are older,
I to love
and you to be loved,
we have,
no matter how,
by our wills survived
to keep
the jeweled prize
always
at our finger tips.
We will it so
and so it is
past all accident.
WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
Habitation
Marriage is not
a house or even a tent
it is before that, and colder:
the edge of the forest, the edge
of the desert
the unpainted stairs
at the back where we squat
outside, eating popcorn
the edge of the receding glacier
where painfully and with wonder
at having survived even
this far
we are learning to make fire
MARGARET ATWOOD
Animals
Have you forgotten what we were like then
when we were still first rate
and the day came fat with an apple in its mouth
it's no use worrying about Time
but we did have a few tricks up our sleeves
and turned some sharp corners
the whole pasture looked like our meal
we didn't need speedometers
we could manage cocktails out of ice and water
I wouldn't want to be faster
or greener than now if you were with me O you
were the best of all my days
FRANK O'HARA
Earthly Love
Conventions of the time
held them together.
It was a period
(very long) in which
the heart once given freely
was required, as a formal gesture,
to forfeit liberty: a consecration
at once moving and hopelessly doomed.
As to ourselves:
fortunately we diverged
from these requirements,
as I reminded myself
when my life shattered.
So that what we had for so long
was, more or less,
voluntary, alive.
And only long afterward
did I begin to think otherwise.
We are all human—
we protect ourselves
as well as we can
even to the point of denying
clarity, the point
of self-deception. As in
the consecration to which I alluded.
And yet, within this deception,
true happiness occurred.
So that I believe I would
repeat these errors exactly.
Nor does it seem to me
crucial to know
whether or not such happiness
is built on illusion:
it has its own reality.
And in either case, it will end.
LOUISE GLÜCK
The Journey
Anghiari is medieval, a sleeve sloping down
A steep hill, suddenly sweeping out
To the edge of a cliff, and dwindling.
But far up the mountain, behind the town,
We too were swept out, out by the wind,
Alone with the Tuscan grass.
Wind had been blowing across the hills
For days, and everything now was graying gold
With dust, everything we saw, even
Some small children scampering along a road,
We sat beside them to rest in some brushwood,
And I leaned down to rinse the dust from my face.
I found the spider web there, whose hinges
Reeled heavily and crazily with the dust,
Whole mounds and cemeteries of it, sagging
And scattering shadows among shells and wings.
And then she stepped into the center of air
Slender and fastidious, the golden hair
Of daylight along her shoulders, she poised there,
While ruins crumbled on every side of her.
Free of the dust, as though a moment before
She had stepped inside the earth, to bathe herself.
I gazed, close to her, till at last she stepped
Away in her own good time.
Many men
Have searched all over Tuscany and never found
What I found there, the heart
of the light
Itself shelled and leaved, balancing
On filaments themselves falling. The secret
Of this journey is to let the wind
Blow its dust all over your body,
To let it go on blowing, to step lightly, lightly
All the way through your ruins, and not to lose
Any sleep over the dead, who surely
Will bury their own, don't worry.
JAMES WRIGHT
Three Times My Life Has Opened
Three times my life has opened.
Once, into darkness and rain.
Once, into what the body carries at all times within it and starts
to remember each time it enters the act of love.
Once, to the fire that holds all.
These three were not different.
You will recognize what I am saying or you will not.
But outside my window all day a maple has stepped from her leaves
like a woman in love with winter, dropping the colored silks.
Neither are we different in what we know.
There is a door. It opens. Then it is closed. But a slip of light
stays, like a scrap of unreadable paper left on the floor,
or the one red leaf the snow releases in March.
JANE HIRSHFIELD
Decade
When you came, you were like red wine and honey,
And the taste of you burnt my mouth with its sweetness.
Now you are like morning bread,
Smooth and pleasant.
I hardly taste you at all for I know your savour,
But I am completely nourished.
AMY LOWELL
This Is Just to Say
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
and so cold
WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
Life Is Motion
In Oklahoma,
Bonnie and Josie,
Dressed in calico,
Danced around a stump.
They cried,
‘Ohoyaho,
Ohoo’…
Celebrating the marriage
Of flesh and air.
WALLACE STEVENS
Biographies of Contributors
ANNA AKHMATOVA (1889–1966): Russian lyric poet whose work includes Evening, Rosary, and White Flock.
MARGARET ATWOOD (1939–): Canadian novelist and poet. Her second book of poetry, The Circle Game, won the Governor General's Award in 1966. She lives and writes in Toronto.
BHARTRHARI (570–651): Hindu philosopher and poet-grammarian, author of the Vakyapadiya (“Words in a Sentence”), regarded as one of the most significant works on the philosophy of language.
KATE BINGHAM: Her first novel, Mummy 's Legs, received an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors. She lives in London.
ELIZABETH BISHOP (1911–79): Highly regarded American poet who won every major poetry award in the United States, including the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. She served as chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 1966 until 1979.
LOUISE BOGAN (1897–1970): Influential American poet who won the Bolligen Prize in 1955. She wrote poetry criticism for The New Yorker magazine for thirty-eight years.
CAROLYN CREEDON (1969–): Creedon's poems have been included in the Best American Poetry series. She is currently an Ada Comstock Scholar at Smith College.
E. E. CUMMINGS (1894–1962): Influential American poet know for his experimental, playful style.
SILVIA CURBELO (1955–): Cuban-born poet who now lives in Tampa, Florida. She is the author of two collections of poetry, The Secret History of Water (Anhinga Press) and The Geography of Leaving ( S i l v e r f i s h Review Press).
EMILY DICKINSON (1830–86): One of the nineteenth century's greatest poets, Dickinson lived quietly at home in Amherst, Massachusetts, with her lawyer father. Only seven of her approximately one thousand poems were published during her lifetime.
JOHN DONNE (1572–1631): British author of religious poems and essays as well as erotic love poetry.
MARK DOTY (1953–): Contemporary American poet who has won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the T. S. Eliot Prize. His most recent work is Murano: Poem. He lives in New York City.
GAVIN EWART (1916–1995): British comic poet, his works include The Young Pebble's Guide to His Toes. He also edited the Penguin Book of Light Verse.
LOUISE GLÜCK (1943–): Former poet laureate of the United States, whose collections have won both the Pulitzer Prize (1992) and the National Book Critics Circle Award (1985).
DONALD HALL (1928–): Born in New Haven, Connecticut, Hall was a National Book Award Nominee in 1956 and 1979. He lives in New Hampshire.
JANE HIRSHFIELD (1953–): American poet who studied at the San Francisco Zen Center for eight years. She has translated several collections of Japanese poetry. Her latest works include The October Palace, The Lives of the Heart, and Given Sugar, Given Salt.
SAM HOLTZAPPLE (1965–) lives and writes in New York City.
MARIE HOWE (1950–): American poet and editor who currently teaches at Columbia University. Her poetry collection The Good Thief (1988) was chosen for the National Poetry series by Margaret Atwood.
LANGSTON HUGHES (1902–67): The most important writer of the Harlem Renaissance, he published ten books of poetry, including Montage of A Dream Deferred. He lived in New York City.
JANE KENYON (1947–95): She published four volumes of poetry, including Constance (1993). She lived at Eagle Pond Farm in New Hampshire until she died of leukemia in 1995.
ETHERIDGE KNIGHT (1931–1991): Knight began writing poetry while he was incarcerated at Indiana State Prison. His book Poems from Prison received great critical acclaim in the United States.
KIM KONOPKA lives in New Mexico and France. Currently she is living in Bordeaux, where she works as an art model, repairs Harley Davidson motorcycles, and is writing her first novel.
PHILIP LARKIN (1922–85): Highly influential British poet whose collections of poetry include The Less Deceived and High Window.
JAMES LAUGHLIN (1914–1997): American poet and publisher. He founded the publishing house New Directions, through which he released some of the best experimental and avant-garde writing of the past fifty years.
DORIANNE LAUX (1952–): Born in Augusta, Maine, Laux has been widely anthologized and received the Pushcart Prize in 1986. She lives in Eugene, Oregon, where she teaches creative writing at the University of Oregon.
LI-YOUNG LEE (1944–): Chinese American poet who was born in Indonesia. He is the author of The City in Which I Love You and Book of My Nights.
ROBERT LOPEZ (1975–) and JEFF MARX (1970–): New York composers and lyricists who rocketed to fame for their Tony Award–winning Broadway musical, Avenue Q.
AMY LOWELL (1874–1925): Born in Brookline, Massachusetts, into a prominent New England family. A collection of Lowell's work, published posthumously as What's O'clock?, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry.
KATHARYN HOWD MACHAN (1952–): Prolific poet whose work has appeared in numerous literary publications and more than fifty anthologies and textbooks. A teacher of creative writing and women's studies at Ithaca College, she lives in Ithaca, New York, with her husband, the poet Eric Machan Howd, and their two children.
KATHERINE MANSFIELD (1888–1923): New Zealand writer who became a member of the Bloomsbury literary group in London. Known for her brilliant short stories, she also wrote poetry.
CHARLOTTE MATTHEWS (1966–): Matthews's chapbook, A Kind of Devotion, is forthcoming from Palanquin Press. Her poems have appeared in the Mississippi Review, Tar River Poetr y, Sou'wester, Meridian, Poet Lore, Potomac Review, and Eclipse. Her manuscript Green Stars was named
a finalist in the National Poetry series competition. She lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.
MARK MCMORRIS (1960–) has published in many journals, and his poetry has been widely anthologized. His latest book is The Blaze of Poui. He is currently an assistant professor of English at George town University in Washington, D.C.
PABLO NERUDA (1904–73): Nobel Prize–winning Chilean poet. He received the Lenin Peace Prize in 1953.
FRANK O'HARA (1926–1966): O'Hara worked at the Museum of Modern Art in New York for most of his life. He published his first volume of poems, A City in Winter and Other Poems, in 1952, and over the course of his life he published five more collections.
SHARON OLDS (1942–): Often described as a confessional poet, Olds won the National Book Critics Circle Award for The Dead and the Living in 1983. She teaches poetry at New York University and Goldwater Hospital.
DOROTHY PARKER (1893–1967): Journalist, humorist, and a founding member of the famous Algonquin Round Table. Her collections of poetry include Enough Rope, Sunset Gun, and Death and Taxes.
LINDA PASTAN (1932–): Her collection PM/AM: New and Selected Poems was nominated for an American Book Award in 1983. She lives and works in Potomac, Maryland.
JÁNOS PILINSZKY (1921–1981): Influential Hungarian poet whose work deals with religious and metaphysical themes. During World War II he spent time as a soldier and prisoner of war. He was awarded the Kossuth Prize in 1980.
SYLVIA PLATH (1932–1963): Poet and writer born in Boston. Her most famous works include “Ariel” and the novel The Bell Jar. Her work has been widely anthologized and taught in universities.
JACQUES PRÉVERT (1900–1977): Popular and influential French poet whose works include Paroles (1946) and Spectacle (1951).
RUMI (1207–1273): Thirteenth-century Persian poet.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (1564–1616): Believed by many to be the greatest writer in the English language, he acted, lived, and wrote in London and Stratford.
ELEANOR STANFORD (1976–) was a Henry Hoyns Fellow at the University of Virginia, 2003–4. She has an MA in English from the University of Wisconsin and spent two years in the Peace Corps in the Cape Verde Islands. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Poetry, Ploughshares, Callaloo, the Indiana Review, and other journals.
WALLACE STEVENS (1879–1955): A poet and insurance executive who lived in Hartford, Connecticut, his collections of poetry include Harmonium and Collected Poems.
ELIZABETH ASH VÉLEZ (1945–): A journalist and writer, Vélez teaches at Georgetown University.