So this week I didn’t do my Weekly Bites post; apologies to the six people who actually read my blog, it’s not that I don’t appreciate you and your adoring fan mail (which must have got lost in the post by the way…), but I’ve been otherwise preoccupied. Terrible excuse I know, but normal service will return soon I promise.
As a consolatory gesture, I’m doing this bonus post, which some of you may have a passing interest in. Hands up, who likes poetry?
Okay, anyone left? Poetry, in my humble opinion, gets a pretty bad rap. It has this embarrassing association with cringeworthy teenage angst and unrequited love, which makes it pretty uncool. But poetry, at its best, is just a way for writers to explore thoughts, emotions and ideas outside the constraints of traditional form. It doesn’t have to be bound by structure, form, grammar or even logic. It is a medium that allows writers to play with words.
I’m going to share with you a selection of poetry that appeals to me, a taster menu if you will, of poems that aren’t talking about clouds or adhering to a strict rhyming pattern. It is all love poetry, but all of them defy the usual tropes; whether it is about the harsh realities and ugly underbelly of love, or simply exploring the process learning to love yourself, these poems really cut through to the heart of the matter.
Enjoy.
Words Wide Night – Carol Ann Duffy
This might well be my hands-down favourite love poem. It captures the exquisitely bittersweet longing of separated lovers, and is just really simple and evocative.
Somewhere on the other side of this wide night
and the distance between us, I am thinking of you.
The room is turning slowly away from the moon.
This is pleasurable. Or shall I cross that out and say
it is sad? In one of the tenses I singing
an impossible song of desire that you cannot hear.
La lala la. See? I close my eyes and imagine the dark hills
I would have to cross
to reach you. For I am in love with you
and this is what it is like or what it is like in words.
Love Song – Ted Hughes
Ted Hughes wrote this poem about his complex relationship with his wife, talented yet tragic writer Sylvia Plath. It’s almost viscerally brutal, and plays with the expectations of traditional sentiments of love.
He loved her and she loved him
His kisses sucked out her whole past and future or tried to
He had no other appetite
She bit him she gnawed him she sucked
She wanted him complete inside her
Safe and sure forever and ever
Their little cries fluttered into the curtains
Her eyes wanted nothing to get away
Her looks nailed down his hands his wrists his elbows
He gripped her hard so that life
Should not drag her from that moment
He wanted all future to cease
He wanted to topple with his arms round her
Off that moment’s brink and into nothing
Or everlasting or whatever there was
Her embrace was an immense press
To print him into her bones
His smiles were the garrets of a fairy palace
Where the real world would never come
Her smiles were spider bites
So he would lie still till she felt hungry
His words were occupying armies
Her laughs were an assassin’s attempts
His looks were bullets daggers of revenge
Her glances were ghosts in the corner with horrible secrets
His whispers were whips and jackboots
Her kisses were lawyers steadily writing
His caresses were the last hooks of a castaway
Her love-tricks were the grinding of locks
And their deep cries crawled over the floors
Like an animal dragging a great trap.
For Women Who Are Difficult To Love – Warsan Shire
Best known as the lyricist behind Beyonce’s phenomenal visual essay-album Lemonade, British-Somali poet Warsan Shire exploresregaining empowerment in this poem that resembles the speech you want to give to the women in your life, reminding them never to be less than they are.
you are a horse running alone
and he tries to tame you
compares you to an impossible highway
to a burning house
says you are blinding him
that he could never leave you
forget you
want anything but you
you dizzy him, you are unbearable
every woman before or after you
is doused in your name
you fill his mouth
his teeth ache with memory of taste
his body just a long shadow seeking yours
but you are always too intense
frightening in the way you want him
unashamed and sacrificial
he tells you that no man can live up to the one who
lives in your head
and you tried to change didn’t you?
closed your mouth more
tried to be softer
prettier
less volatile, less awake
but even when sleeping you could feel
him travelling away from you in his dreams
so what did you want to do, love
split his head open?
you can’t make homes out of human beings
someone should have already told you that
and if he wants to leave
then let him leave
you are terrifying
and strange and beautiful
something not everyone knows how to love.
Feminine – Beatrice Thorn
A fiercely rebellious poem, appropriate around this time of Pride, which reasserts the boundaries of femininity and what it means to an individual. (I’m sorry about the formatting issue with this one, wordpress just won’t play ball).
Tell me I’m feminine
You mean it kindly
A compliment
Maybe
But please
Would you kindly
Not
Back off out of my space
With your sympathetic words
As if you give me the gift of femininity
As if you bestow it upon me
Bitch I take it
I claim for my own
Without your help
Without your hand outs
Well meaning
Well meant
They’re
Well,
Meaningless.
I know what you’re really saying
This gift of feminine
Bow-wrapped respectability
Means good girl, quiet, nice,
Pretty, normal, someone’s wife
Well no and thank you
I take feminine
And I give it hard.
It’s very
Queer
That you think the height of my ambitions is
Nice
Well
I think I’ll pass.
I pass very well
That’s my femininity in motion
My cloak of invisibility
It’s hooded
Purple velvet
Ripples as I walk
Sways with my hips
I’m not hiding
Only in plain sight
Where the small minded
See what they expect.
Their loss.
Because you know what?
Fuck your empty poisoned chalice
I am feminine
And what’s more
I fuck femininity and my chalice is full, full, full.
I can’t resist feminine.
It’s beautiful,
Strong, fragile,
Effervescent.
Powerful
Sexy.
Not soft and pink,
A romantic caress
But a clasp
I wear it like a brooch
Pinned to my skin
Beyond reason and my rhyme.
This feminine is mine.
Converted to poetry, or still untouched? Let me know what you think.
shrewishthoughts 