The Thursday 13. 13 Intense Love Poems I Used to Know by Heart. (Now Available Online!)

Thirteen Things about Damozel.

Thirteen poems about love I knew by heart when I was in my twenties. These were the fragments I shored against my ruin.  Hello, young lovers, wherever you are.  I'm glad I'm not you.

1. E. E. Cummings, "since feeling is first."  One of my favorite love poems of all time---lyrical, impassioned, filled with radiance.  Alas, I no longer believe that "feeling is first" or that "kisses are a better fate than wisdom," but it's still one of my favorite poems.
2. E. E. Cummings, "somewhere i have never travelled."  How deep is your love?    .
3. Hilda Doolittle (H.D.), "At Baia."  What does yearning feel like?  This.
4. E. E. Cummings, "may i feel said he."  A naughty, silly poem about sex. 
5. William Carlos Williams, "To Mark Antony in Heaven." A poem about the power of love to transcend space, time, and historical accident. Those who lust in their hearts for James Purefoy's version in HBO's series Rome might not be able to square that Mark Antony (and especially not that Cleopatra) with the lovers imagined by Williams, but the poem is beautiful and inspiring. 
6. William Carlos Williams, "The Ivy Crown."  Yet another poem which features Antony and Cleopatra (scroll down to read it) as exemplars of the transformative power of sexual passion between lovers. 
7. Syvia Plath.  "The Mad Girl's Love Song."  Angry, defiant, crazy/desperate love---by a specialist.
8. Robert Seymour Bridges, "I Will Not Let Thee Go."  Obsessive, stalker-y love.
9. Emily Dickenson.  "Wild Nights!---Wild Nights!"  Unrestrained and rapturous longing.  My first husband read it aloud to me on our fifth date. 
10. Wallace Stevens, "Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour."  When the spiritual and physical merge.
11. Sappho, "It was you, Atthis, who said."  Happiness remembered in excruciating detail after the lover has departed and forgotten it all.
12. John Donne, "Busy old fool, unruly sun."  A Renaissance poem about love and sex.  One of the best in history.
    
13. Andrew Marvell, "To his Coy Mistress."  "The grave's a fine and private place/But none do there I think embrace."  So go for it. 

Links to other Thursday Thirteens!

Jon Tillman
Coco
Fence
Jennifer
Tink
This Eclectic Life
Jill

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Comments

[Jon Tillman]

my blood approves,
and kisses are a far better fate
than wisdom

[Coco]

Some very nice poems... can't believe you actually memorized all of them! Awesome!

My favorite love poem is 'I do not love thee' by Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton. Do you know it by any chance?

Come check out my teddies on today's TT :)

[Fence]

Happy T13

Of those I only know "To His Coy Mistress", but I am a little lacking in poetical knowledge, if I didn't study it at school I won't know it :)

[Jennifer]

I'm not familiar with any of these poems, but I still remember a couple of poems (or at least pieces of them) that I had to learn in high school. The Walrus and the Carpenter, A Robert Frost poem that I've forgotten the name of--the one that says And miles to go before I sleep, The Bells by Poe.

I can't remember what day it is, though. Go figure!

[Tink]

I love love poems! :-) I know most of the ones on your list. My favourite is "How do I love thee" by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. I posted it here: http://tinkerbell-nl.blogspot.com/2005/12/and-i-love-you-so.html

My TT lists cars we've owned before our current one.

[This Eclectic Life]

Oh, my! It's a great memory you have/had. Some of those are unfamiliar to me. I look forward to browsing the links tomorrow. Then I'll tell you my favorite. Good post.

[Jill]

I'll have to come and read those poems, when it's not that late, and that I'm not that tired!!
Tanx for visiting!!