Dear Friends -
Monday is St. Valentine’s Day, although according to the Roman Catholic Church it is the feast of Saints Cyril and Methodius (creators of the Slavic alphabet). But advertising and marketing have fully consumed and digested the myth of St. Valentine, depositing it in the aisles of your local grocery and drug stores in the form of pink hearts full of so-called chocolate, available shortly after Christmas. Only three shopping days left!
This Valentine’s Day, I’m going to host an open poetry reading on Zoom. That’s right: come with your favorite love poem, or for those of you in a different space, a heartbreak poem. RSVP here and I’ll send you a zoom link. You don’t have to read a poem, you can just listen to other people read poems. If no one wants to read a poem, I’ll filibuster and read all my favorite love and heartbreak poems. I’m going to turn on the Zoom on Monday, Feb. 14th, at 6pm ET and shut it off promptly at 7pm ET for dinner with my beloved.
RSVP here so I know who is coming, and who is poem-reading. To whet your appetite (or as a challenge?) here are two poems: perhaps the world’s greatest love poem and the world’s greatest heartbreak poem, two different poems written by the same man, Jack Gilbert. You’ll have to guess which is which. Join me Monday for a celebration of love in all its manifold forms.
Failing and Flying
by Jack Gilbert
Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It's the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights that
anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say
the marriage failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.
Tear It Down
by Jack Gilbert
We find out the heart only by dismantling what
the heart knows. By redefining the morning,
we find a morning that comes just after darkness.
We can break through marriage into marriage.
By insisting on love we spoil it, get beyond
affection and wade mouth-deep into love.
We must unlearn the constellations to see the stars.
But going back toward childhood will not help.
The village is not better than Pittsburgh.
Only Pittsburgh is more than Pittsburgh.
Rome is better than Rome in the same way the sound
of racoon tongues licking the inside walls
of the garbage tub is more than the stir
of them in the muck of the garbage. Love is not
enough. We die and are put into the earth forever.
We should insist while there is still time. We must
eat through the wildness of her sweet body already
in our bed to reach the body within the body.
Hope to see you Monday - nicco