Charles Lutwidge Dodgson’s pen name, Lewis Carroll, derives from Latinized versions of his first and middle names, reversed. This poem’s full of reversals, too. Dodgson made his living teaching the logic of mathematics, but became famous as the author of one of the English-speaking world’s most popular nonsense stories. In Alice, part of the poem (which reads like a secret message between lovers) becomes a key piece of evidence in the trial of the Knave of Hearts. It’s nonsense, though: don’t try too hard to puzzle out who “you,” “I,” “we, “and “they” are. With mathematical precision, all its contradictions and oppositions equal … zero.
Gave him two = The King of Hearts, judge in the trial, determines that this refers to missing tarts the Knave is alleged to have stolen.
* * *
THE LINGAM AND THE YONI
A. D. Hope
The Lingam and the Yoni
Are walking hand in glove,
O are you listening, honey?
I hear my honey-love.
The He and She our movers
What is it they discuss?
Is it the talk of Lovers?
And do they speak of us?
I hear their high palaver—
O tell me what they say!
The talk goes on for ever
So deep in love are they;
So deep in thought, debating
The suburb and the street;
Time-payment calculating
Upon the bedroom suite.
But ours is long division
By love’s arithmetic,
Until they make provision
To buy a box of brick,
A box that makes her prisoner,
That he must slave to win
To do the Lingam honour,
To keep the Yoni in.
The mortgage on tomorrow?
The haemorrhage of rent?
Against the heart they borrow
At five or six per cent.
The heart has bought fulfilment
Which yet their mouths defer
Until the last instalment
Upon the furniture.
No Lingam for her money
Can make up youth’s arrears:
His layby on the Yoni
Will not be paid in years.
And they, who keep this tally,
They count what they destroy;
While, in its secret valley
Withers the herb of joy.
* * *
Tantric Tempers
Although they sound like something out of Dr. Seuss, Lingam and Yoni come from ancient Sanskrit and the worship of the Indian deities Shiva and Shakti. Together these male and female forces of nature cancel each other out and add up to everything that exists, a mathematical relationship that Professor Dodgson would recognize, but that might make him blush. Here, A. D. Hope presents them as a formula for domestic disaster.
Lingam = The phallic (male) essence that symbolizes the god Shiva.
Yoni = The vulvar (female) essence that symbolizes the goddess Shakti.
Arrears = Debt, with a sprinkling of double entendre.
Layby = Payment on time, but also suggestive.
* * *
* * *
THE BIG APPLE OF MY EYE
Ah, city life! New York, New York! Center of romance, of culture, of sophistication, of fine restaurants, of brilliant people, of dazzling and varied entertainments! Of the occasional cheap date!
* * *
* * *
Diminution
Notice that everything’s small in this poem, including both inanimate (luncheon-ette) and animate (usher-ette) objects. The latter might object to such objectification.
Petite chérie = Little darling.
Tangerine = Originally a Tangerine Orange (from Tangiers) before the name was shortened.
Le coup de grâce = The death blow.
Demitasse = Small cup.
Serviette = Napkin.
Weazened = Shriveled.
* * *
TO AN USHERETTE
John Updike
Ah, come with me,
Petite chérie,
And we shall rather happy be.
I know a modest luncheonette
Where, for a little, one can get
A choplet, baby lima beans,
And, segmented, two tangerines.
Le coup de grâce,
My petty lass,
Will be a demi-demitasse
Within a serviette conveyed
By weazened waiters, underpaid,
Who mincingly might grant us spoons
While a combo tinkles trivial tunes.
Ah, with me come,
Ma mini-femme,
And I shall say I love you some.
LOVE UNDER THE REPUBLICANS (OR DEMOCRATS)
Ogden Nash
Come live with me and be my love
And we will all the pleasures prove
Of a marriage conducted with economy
In the Twentieth Century Anno Donomy.
We’ll live in a dear little walk-up flat
With practically room to swing a cat
And a potted cactus to give it hauteur
And a bathtub equipped with dark brown water.
We’ll eat, without undue discouragement,
Foods low in cost but high in nouragement
And quaff with pleasure, while chatting wittily,
The peculiar wine of Little Italy.
We’ll remind each other it’s smart to be thrifty
And buy our clothes for something-fifty.
We’ll stand in line on holidays
For seats at unpopular matinees.
For every Sunday we’ll have a lark
And take a walk in Central Park.
And one of these days not too remote
I’ll probably up and cut your throat.
* * *
The Passionate Cheapskate to His Love
Like John Updike (and Sir Walter Raleigh on page 54). Ogden Nash can’t resist playing off the opening of a famous love poem by Christopher Marlowe, “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” (see Poetry Out Loud), that invites a young lady to enjoy the simple pleasures of rural life. Apparently the pleasures of simplicity ain’t all they’re cracked up to be.
* * *
* * *
LOVE AND ROCKETS
Sometimes fireworks go off, trumpets blare, and choirs sing. Who cares if people look at you oddly? You’re in love! Here Robert Penn Warren and Nikki Giovanni exult in the sheer, intoxicating, silly wonder of it all. Can you blame them?
* * *
* * *
Spume = Foam.
Winds = A verb here (with a long i), evoking the image of a watch’s mechanical mainspring, with wind wound by the heart.
* * *
LOVE: TWO VIGNETTES
Robert Penn Warren
1. Mediterranean Beach, Day after Storm
How instant joy, how clang
And whang the sun, how
Whoop the sea, and oh,
Sun, sing, as whiter than
Rage of snow, let sea the spume
Fling.
Let sea the spume, white, fling,
White on blue wild
With wind, let sun
Sing, while the world
Scuds, clouds boom and belly,
Creak like sails, whiter than,
Brighter than,
Spume in sun-song, oho!
The wind is bright.
Wind the heart winds
In constant coil, turning
In the — forever — light.
Give me your hand.
2. Deciduous Spring
Now, now, the world
All gabbles joy like geese, for
An idiot glory the sky
Bangs. Look!
All leaves are new, are
Now, are
Bangles dangling and
Spangling, in a sudden air
Wangling, then
Hanging quiet, bright.
The world comes back, and again
Is gabbling, and yes,
Remarkably worse, for
The world is a whirl of
Green mirrors gone wild with
Deceit, and the world
Whirls green on a string, then
The leaves go quiet, wink
From their own shade, secretly.
Keep still, just a moment, leaves.
There is something I am trying to remember.
* * *
Sensations
Warren’s poem celebrates the senses—sound, sight, taste, touch, smell—perceptions that all point to something deeper. Read these vignettes like a joyful shout, letting the exuberant sound of the words explode into life. Notice how alliteration (the repetition of sounds at the beginning of words) creates a percussive rhythm.
* * *
* * *
Pop Art
Where Warren turns to exuberant nature for his imagery. Nikki Giovanni draws upon popular culture and contemporary turns of phrase. Here she throws up her hands and “resigns” from the everyday business of acting like a responsible, mature person, giving herself up entirely to the silliness and wonder of being in love.
* * *
RESIGNATION
Nikki Giovanni
I love you
because the Earth turns round the sun
because the North wind blows north
sometimes
because the Pope is Catholic
and most Rabbis Jewish
because winters flow into springs
and the air clears after a storm
because only my love for you
despite the charms of gravity
keeps me from falling off this Earth
into another dimension
I love you
because it is the natural order of things
I love you
like the habit I picked up in college
of sleeping through lectures
or saying I’m sorry
when I get stopped for speeding
because I drink a glass of water
in the morning
and chain-smoke cigarettes
all through the day
because I take my coffee Black
and my milk with chocolate
because you keep my feet warm
though my life a mess
I love you
because I don’t want it
any other way
I am helpless
in my love for you
It makes me so happy
to hear you call my name
I am amazed you can resist
locking me in an echo chamber
where your voice reverberates
through the four walls
sending me into spasmatic ecstasy
I love you
because its been so good
for so long
that if I didn’t love you
I’d have to be born again
and that is not a theological statement I am pitiful in my love for you
The Dells tell me Love
is so simple
the thought though of you
sends indescribably delicious multitudinous
thrills throughout and through-in my body
I love you
because no two snowflakes are alike
and it is possible
if you stand tippy-toe
to walk between the raindrops
I love you
because I am afraid of the dark
and can’t sleep in the light
because I rub my eyes
when I wake up in the morning
and find you there
because you with all your magic powers were
determined that
I should love you
because there was nothing for you but that
I would love you
I love you
because you made me
want to love you
more than I love my privacy
my freedom my commitments and responsibilities
I love you ’cause I changed my life
to love you
because you saw me one friday
afternoon and decided that I would
love you
I love you I love you I love you
* * *
Helpless = Try reading this poem as if you’re someone swept away by the silliness and sensation of pure infatuation. Like Billy Collins (page 1), Giovanni has written a litany of things that might not make sense to someone who’s not in love.
* * *
* * *
“Love Is So Simple” = Title of a 1968 song by the Dells, a soul group best known for the 1956 hit “Oh. What a Night.”
* * *
* * *
LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS
Love is optimistic, even when there’s little reason for optimism. These two lyrics from Elizabethan England make the best of bad situations.
* * *
* * *
Jest Fooling
Feste, the court jester to Countess Olivia in Shakespeare’s play, sings this even though the palace is officially in mourning and everyone is supposed to be walking around with long faces. It’s meant to be sung to music, unlike most of the love poems in this book; the original tune was probably a traditional melody.
’Tis not hereafter = A frequent theme of love poetry is to enjoy love while you can, as expressed in the classical motto “carpe diem” (seize the day).
* * *
“O MISTRESS MINE” (FROM TWELFTH NIGHT)
William Shakespeare
O mistress mine, where are you roaming?
O, stay and hear, your true-love’s coming,
That can sing both high and low.
Trip no further, pretty sweeting;
Journeys end in lovers meeting,
Every wise man’s son doth know.
What is love? ’Tis not hereafter;
Present mirth hath present laughter;
What’s to come is still unsure.
In delay there lies no plenty,
Then come kiss me sweet and twenty,
Youth’s a stuff will not endure.
NOTHING BUT NO AND I
Michael Drayton
Nothing but no and I, and I and no,
How falls it out so strangely you reply?
I tell ye, fair, I’ll not be answered so,
With this affirming no, denying I.
I say, I love, you sleightly answer, I:
I say, you love, you pule me out a no:
I say, I die, you echo me with I:
Save me, I cry, you sigh me out a no;
Must woe and I have nought but no and I?
No I am, if I no more can have;
Answer no more, with silence make reply,
And let me take myself what I do crave,
Let no and I, with I and you be so:
Then answer no and I, and I and no.
* * *
There’s “Yes! Yes!” in Your Ayes
Drayton’s sonnet plays with a Petrarchan tradition in which the beloved is a cruel mistress who torments the lover by refusing him. Here, though, a pun provides the poet with cause for optimism.
Sleightly = Misleadingly.
Pule = Whimper.
* * *
2
HELLO, I LOVE YOU
“But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be.”
—Luke 1:29
* * *
GOOD MORNING AND GOOD NIGHT
Love in the abstract is well and good, but, as songwriters Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson remind us, “Ain’t nothing like the real thing, baby.” Perhaps that’s why poets spend their days thinking about love and pondering its mysteries—mysteries that tend to reveal themselves only under cover of darkness or in the clear light of dawn.
* * *
* * *
Troth = Good faith.
Country pleasures = Wealthy urban families sometimes sent infants off to “wet nurses” in rural areas.
Snorted = Snored.
Seven sleepers = Legendary early Christian martyrs who fled to a cave where, like Rip van Winkle, they fell asleep and awakened after years had passed, thinking it only a night’s sleep.
Each hath one = The lovers’ worlds are united by possessing each other.
* * *
THE GOOD MORROW
John Donne
I wonder by my troth, what thou, and I
Did, till we loved? were we not weaned till then?
But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?
Or snorted we in the seven sleepers’ den?
’Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be.
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee.
And now good morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear;
For love, all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room, an every where.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,
Let maps to others, worlds on worlds have shown,
Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.
My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest,
Where can we find two better hemispheres
Without sharp north, without declining west?
What ever dies, was not mixed equally;
If our two loves be one, or, thou and I
Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.
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Love Poetry Out Loud Page 2