Yesterday, I thought about writing a Valentine’s Day post, or an anti-Valentine’s Day post. I also thought about doing a phone dump of screenshots of love poems (which quite often aren’t “love” poems). Apparently, the former poet laureate, Billy Collins, has been doing a video blog or podcast or something like that in which he reads anti-Valentine’s Day poems. I didn’t do any of those things. Instead, I went back and read other things I’ve written on Valentine’s Day. In doing so, I was surprised to find this section from two years ago:
Instead, I’m thinking about how we probably have too few days in which we think about, talk about, and much less show, what it means to love another person. Far too often, love feels like an almost taboo subject – or one relegated to sappy poets and flowery or overly-dramatic language. The mere word feels hippy infused, or not serious. For nearly all of human history it has been a major preoccupation of music, art, and the human spirit. Yet, for all of our pursuits of it, I often get the sense, perhaps wrongly, that if people think deeply about love, they don’t often talk about it.
I wasn’t so much surprised that I wrote that but more surprised that similar sentiments were expressed in the bell hooks book I recently finished. Chapter one of that book, all about love, begins with a quote from Diane Ackerman. “As a society we are embarrassed by love. We treat it as if it were an obscenity. We reluctantly admit to it. Even saying the word makes us stumble and blush…” Hooks’ first sentence reads: “The men in my life have always been the folks who are wary of using the word ‘love’ lightly.”
This was a nice little affirmation of my observations and feelings on the subject: mainly that in American society love is taboo and seen as “not manly” or a subject more fit for women to discuss, digest, fret, and gossip over. We may read, as Harold Bloom suggests, to discover minds more original than our own, but we also read to discover ourselves and refine our thinking. The hooks book has resonated with me because it validated, challenged, and refined my thinking.
In last year’s Valentine’s Day post, I wrote:
I’ve also wanted to write about the absolute stuck in the pit of despair feeling I had over the weekend, but haven’t quite been able to figure out the best approach. I know my fight or flight responses have been triggered lately which has made it feel like the world is moving on or progressing and I’m not. This is when I tend to want to hole up, to disappear a bit, maybe emerge at a later date like Rocky, better trained and ready to fight. Except I’m not much of a fighter – I’m more inclined to just walk away. Except I also seldom walk away. I’m usually the one who stays behind to turn out the lights, the one standing in the dark trying to remember the paintings on the wall and the way someone’s eyes sparkled in the soft glow of a lamp.
Just a few days ago I was writing about the desire to disappear… maybe it’s a February thing.
As I tried to think of something to say about Valentine’s Day, I was happy to see pictures of friends and their partners celebrating, and I thought about some friends who are single and not celebrating. I was reminded of lines from a Stephen Dunn poem about tenderness, “…it’s a word I see now / you must be older to use, / you must have experienced the absence of it.” I suspect a lot of people take their relationships for granted… and for those who experience the absence of partnership, there may exist a deeper appreciation for it.
As I scrolled through social media, I took plenty of screenshots of poems and quotes. I’ll end by sharing two. I came across this quote from Pablo Neruda (which I enjoyed): “then you realize, it’s not the one who moves the ground beneath you, but the one who centers you. It’s not the one who steals your heart, but the one who makes you feel as if you have it back.” And this poem by Ada Limón:
