First-and-Last Lines

Susan, here, and already excited about reading the results of this challenge which asks:

What is Love?

Love Park,  Philadelphia,  by ecospc

Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day in the USA, in South Africa, and other places that have been touched by European cultures.  Putting aside the religious and the commercial histories of the day, I ask you simply, what is love?

My favorite definition of romantic love:

 “. . . two solitudes protect and border and greet each other,” 

comes from Rainer Marie Rilke’s 7^th letter in Letters to a Young Poet.  Rilke sees young love as flawed in its groping.  He says in this letter that each love is a learning ground for the next until this respectful place is discovered. 

Rodin’s “The Kiss”

In contrast, some of you know (or are) couples who, as Rosalind says in Shakespeare’s As you Like it:

. . . no sooner
met but they looked, no sooner looked but they
loved, no sooner loved but they sighed, no sooner
sighed but they asked one another the reason, no
sooner knew the reason but they sought the remedy;
and in these degrees have they made a pair of stairs
to marriage which they will climb . . . .  (5ii)

Some of our parents have loved each other for decades, some have never loved.  I myself am a hermit whose deepest love—one with whom I shared solitude and theatre and reading aloud—died too soon.  I celebrate all kinds of love: love present and absent, love of a partner, love of parents, children, friends, words, work, open sky and so many things that you and I speak of in and out of poetry.

Eternal Love Locks, Pont de l’Archevêché,  photo by Susan

Today, I ask you to write about an event that clarified for you what love is.   

But wait!  

I did not forget about “First and Last Lines”!  
Here is one more example:

Jane Austin’s romantic comedy of manners, Pride and Prejudice, begins with an assertion about romance and ends with a success story:

First Line:  It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.

Last Line:  With the Gardiners, they were always on the most intimate terms. Darcy, as well as Elizabeth, really loved them; and they were both ever sensible of the warmest gratitude towards the persons who, by bringing her into Derbyshire, had been the means of uniting them.

“She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me.”    

C. E. Brock illustration for the 1895 edition of Jane Austen's  Pride and Prejudice 

The first line equates love with economics.  The last line shows a love that overcomes class distinctions and provides room for friendship and gratitude. In between, the individuals destined for each other overcome false pride and social prejudice in a series of events that define true love.  Finally, as in all Austin novels, Elizabeth and Darcy’s love is rewarded with the wealth of contentment.  

Now, the challenge!  

Choose an event to use in a poem, one that answers the question “What is love?”   You may have more than one answer, but choose one focus in your poem.  

Alternative challenges:

Inspired by an illustration in this prompt—include the link

or

An Inner monologue of characters from literature or film

or

U

se the last line from one of your own love poems to start a new poem—link the poem of origin.

Enjoy!

A Love for the Arts by Infamous Hussy 

Please post the link to your new poem in Mr. Linky, and leave a comment in the Garden.  Take time to read and comment on other poems linked here for love.