|
|
 |
Love (2)
Posted: 12 February 2007
Word Count: 21
Summary: For Valentine's day
|
Font Size
|
|
Love (2)
always remember
to never forget
if you would see
the healed bird soar
then you must
set her free
|
Comments by other Members
| |
 joanie at 12:56 on 13 February 2007
 Report this post
|
Again, Z, this is lovely, for the same reasons as 'Love'. The concept is beautiful, with a wealth of meaning in the whole.
joanie
| |
 James Graham at 15:29 on 13 February 2007
Report this post
|
I like your second ‘Love’ poem better than the first, because it has the eloquent image of the healed bird. I visualise someone’s cupped hands holding the bird, then lifted up high and opened so that the bird can take off. I imagine the feeling of relief and joy when the bird does fly and doesn't falter or fall. It brings me back to a notion that I find myself using again and again - of the master key that opens many doors. This image could have specific personal meaning for almost anyone. It might evoke for any reader a time in his/her own life when events strained a relationship - when love seemed to be injured and had to be nursed until it was ready to ‘fly’ again.
I like the tone of the poem too, the urgency in its voice. I think I can see a reason for reinforcing ‘Always remember’ with ‘never forget’ but I can’t quite accept the way these two lines are. Why not just begin: ‘Never forget/ if you would see’? A short poem carries its own inbuilt emphasis. ‘Never forget’ as a line of verse is already more emphatic than it would be in conversation; there’s already more focus on it. In poetry, especially short poetry, something said once in a couple of words can carry at least as much weight as it would if stridently banged on about in everyday language.
It’s interesting that you should be experimenting with very short forms. I’m not sure the first one works very well, but this one certainly does. Maybe there are more to come?
James.
|
|
| |
.JPG) Zettel at 20:15 on 13 February 2007
Report this post
|
Thanks James and Joannie
James - for me in this context the image of the healed bird represents the essentially unselfish, giving quality of real love, romantic or otherwise. I am always uncomfortable about efforts to distinguish between kinds of love which often in a sense diminish it. I once had a vehement agrument with a priest about the famous Corinthians 13 "... there are these three, faith, hope and love, and the greatest of these is love." He insisted that here 'love' meant 'charity', that it would be unthinkable that spiritual love might even include the physical, sexual love between human beings. As if this was a lesser, lower, form of love. Discretion prevented me from getting into my long held belief, easier I guess as a believer in Christian moral values without the metaphysics, that Christ was Mary Magdalene's lover. Scorcese course explored that view.
The image in the poem was meant to be taken 2 ways: one a person finds an injured bird and from a form of love, heals it, becomes deeply attached to it but then knows the bird's destiny is to fly free. But second also the case where two people fall in love and through that love perhaps one 'heals' the other emotionally etc. But then comes to realise that the healed partner now must be free, even to love another.
For me love is indivisible though takes many different forms. That sexual love is just as worthy of the word love as any other of its expressions. Which of course is not to say that all sex is an expression of love - far from it.
I use short poems to try to teach myself to distil. I have sort of found myself embarked on an ambitious project to explore what I think and feel and have discovered about love and attachment in all its forms including but only as part, the place of sexuality in that understanding. I have about 10 poems so far, some long, some short. I have to think carefully about those I feel comfortable posting, though my instinct is to not hold any back. However, I am conscious that might be tedious for members of the group.
Thanks as ever for the comments. I see exactly what you are getting at about the first two lines and there are about 4 different ways you can put them together. I'll think carefully about what you say - at the moment my instinct is a bit like that old argument about the split infinitive in Star Trek - that "to go boldy..." though grammatically 'correct' simply doesn't say what "to boldy go...." does. Though I know you are making more than a grammatical point.
Thanks again - as usual you make me think.
regards
Zettel
| |
| |
Comments by other Members
