Love stories. True love poems. I love you poems. The world over, people fall in love. And the world over, people feel the need to put the feeling into words.
Sometimes the poems are romantic poems. Sometimes they're passionate and urgent. Sometimes they're gently erotic and sexy poems.
What does it do for us, to write and read sexy poetry, romantic poems, desperate and aching and secret and despairing poems?
When we're in love, the feeling grips us. Sometimes all we can do is think of whoever we love.
And when we're not in love, we may want to get back a taste of that feeling.
Maybe most of all, to give a true love poem is to say, I love you.
To receive a this poem is to receive love.
Plus, poetry is known to get others to fall for us. The most famous Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda, was deluged by passionate letters from women he had never met - but his love poetry got them to fall in love with him.
Sometimes they're English poems about love. Sometimes they're Hindi, Urdu, French.
Over and over, it isn't enough for us to feel it. We search for the words to say it.
"A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thou."
"How do I love thee? Let me count the ways..."
One poem stopped me cold when I came across it. It's by John Donne, a famous British poet from a few centuries ago. It starts something like, "Shut up and let me love..." Not very romantic at all.
True love poems both express the feeling and arouse our emotions. For me, this poem by John Donne may his express his feelings. It doesn't arouse mine!
Why, by the way, don't we just settle on whatever we figure out are the best poems, the most romantic poems?
There are as many ways of feeling love as there are people. And even for any one person, it keeps changing.
There can be distant attraction, utter confusion, helpless falling in love, choosing to fall in love, easy content love, affectionate loving, urgent intense sexual passion, tenderness. And so we have plain old I love you poems, but also sexy erotic love poetry, passionate poems and on and on and on. Poems for him. Poems for her.
Poetry is like everything else about us - we share so much with other people, and yet we're unique.
How do I love thee? That poet counted the ways.
That is only the beginning.
Love poetry - feeling intensified, brought alive by words.
Elsa Schieder, writer and poet, has recently come out with a book of true love poems. An earlier collection is Love Gamble.
Visit Elsa's full site at:
Elsas-Word-Story-Image-Idea-Music-Emporium.com
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