Washington, DC, December 14, 2011 —Discover writers and poets who can say what needs to be said about love better than we can. That means they inform our understanding of love. That means they are quotable and can make a love letter you write or a marriage proposal you say unforgettable.
Don’t forget to read the footnote* below: It could save you time (and money) when you write that love letter or get down on bended knee.
10: Ethel Spector Person, Dreams of Love and Fateful Encounters: The Power of Romantic Passion.
Spector is a psychiatrist who believes that men are as susceptible to love as women, that believing in LOVE is not the adult version of believing in Santa Claus, that “love is an act of the imagination,” and that Freud did not miss love’s importance, but that he could not give it its due because of his need to legitimize psychoanalysis as “objective” science. Read her to figure yourself out.
What's life without love? Our top 10 writers and poets have a few insights.
9. Dorothy Parker, poet: Irony was her specialty along with broken love affairs. Her insights are unforgettable but probably won’t help with seduction. Oh, you never know: If you’re big on irony, you may want to find a partner who gets you.
8. T.S. Eliot, poet: Not usually thought of as a love poet, but his love of Christ is undeniable in The Four Quartets. Religious and literary folk will find wisdom on life and love here. His unhappy marriage may have something to do with the lack of passionate poetry. But Tennessee Williams, a great lover, did lift from him for Streetcar Named Desire. Hard to argue with Tennessee.
7. Wallace Stevens, poet: Strikes me as a bit of a rationalist on the subject of love. Another unhappy marriage to consider here. It’s hard to argue with his poem “Re-Statement of Romance.” My daughter and son-in-law quoted the poem in their wedding program. My favorite for reasons that only the footnote can explain is “The Planet on the Table.”
6. Elizabeth Bishop, poet: Nothing need be said but this: Read “One Art.” The poem was quoted by Cameron Diaz in the chic flick In Her Shoes. Great flick, by the way.
5. Dana Gioia, poet: Not nearly well-known enough. Read Interrogations at Noon. The poem “Voyeur” blew me away. (In the following clip, Gioia reads his poem "The Lunatic, the Lover, and the Poet.")
4. Robert Hass, poet: Former U.S. Poet Laureate. My favorite of his books is Human Wishes. My beloved poem in that book is “Privilege of Being.”
3. E.E. Cummings, poet: Here’s the stuff for love letters. Don’t miss “since feeling is first” and many others. (The poet reads his own "Somewhere I have never traveled..." in the following video.)
2. W.H. Auden, poet: Nobody can beat him but one, and that may be arguable as Auden is the better poet than my number one. “Lullaby” is a love poem that even Dorothy Parker might have liked. “Funeral Blues” from his “Twelve Songs” was quoted in the romantic comedy, or rom-com as I like to call these flicks, Four Weddings and a Funeral. When poets invade pop culture, you gotta pay attention.
#1. D.H. Lawrence, poet: You know him better as the novelist who wrote Lady Chatterly’s Lover, not his best book. Discover his love poems, most written for his lover and wife Frieda Lawrence. Read and quote “Kisses in the Train.” You will seduce the one you love with that poem.
*Footnote: Want a short cut to the writers and poets? I quote all of them, with the costly permissions required, in my memoir (Re)Making Love: a sex after sixty story.
Mary L. Tabor is the author of the memoir: (Re)Making Love: a sex after sixty story and The Woman Who Never Cooked. She says, “I ferret out the detail, love the footnote, am never bored and believe it all leads to story. Best advice I ever got? ‘Only connect …’ E.M. Forster” Find out more at http://maryltabor.com
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