All poems are love poems
Of all the works of Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet are most popular among the masses – a tragedy that is one of the oldest stories in human history, with each culture containing their own doomed lovers, and an image of a longing that has become synonymous with the poets.
Centuries after Walt Whitman’s song of himself, decades after TS Elliot’s wasteland, and all the movies and media – the Lion King, the Northman, Batman inspired by epic poems of old, an image of a poet as a lover – someone who disturbs the windows of fair maidens with sonnets – endures.
That is their vision; I have another.
I say to them, ‘All poems are love poems, and all stories are love stories.’
History of poetry and printing
All stories were once spoken. All stories were once remembered as songs. In this way, poetry preserved things without which a culture would become impoverished. Then the narrative changed with the invention of printing. Books modified the way we preserved our “once upon tales”, epics evolved into the modern novel, and poetry was fissured from stories and rendered closer to paintings – brief reflection of a moment’s thoughts and emotions.
With no need for memorisation, in time, poets broke away from the strict structures that governed so much of the poetic landscape. Poets like William Blake, Abraham Cowley, and Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass made free verse popular, followed some time later by Pablo Neruda, who built on that foundation.
What qualifies as a poem
Poetry has evolved beyond its roots. We no longer scheme with meters and rhymes. In face of this, a question arises: What transforms words into a poem?
Poetry never was beholden to verse. It always had something to do with the heart. The answer always was love.
What is poetry: what I speak of when I talk of love
When I speak of love, I do not stare into the middle distance, remembering the face of a distant girl. When I speak of love, I speak of all the people and places that we are and were, with all our laughs and tears, the seesaws and swings, the summer trips and birthday gifts. All things that come along for the ride.
In these musings, divorced from the original purpose, there still lingers a sound of the original story. The poem now is brief, as life is brief, and in that exactness of purpose sings what the change of seasons and hands of the clock are singing. The lyrics go something like this: Look at all the faces on the street – they were all made with hope. Do not be in such a rush that you miss the one looking to be found.
And beautiful and innocent things are sometimes hurt without a chance for a prayer. In each life come autumn days and summer rains; connection and community make the loss of separation bearable, and all the words that pay homage to these human things are poetry. Sometimes we need a little comfort, and I find myself thinking of the words of a little Prince: “When grief is comforted, you would be glad to have known me.”
All poems are love poems. All stories are love stories.
