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Q. Would you help me find a short love poem for a special valentine?
A. There are quite a few small books devoted to love poetry on our shelves. They are easy to find. We just searched the catalog with the phrase “love poems.” These anthologies have very short poems, classic English language poems, modern poems and silly poems. Poets write of new love and tragic love; comfortable lifelong love and vanished love; good love, bad love, and no love.
I don’t know which poem this patron chose, but this one caught my eye:
“In that book which is
My memory….
On the first page
That is the chapter when
I first met you
Appear the words…
Here begins a new life.”
I suppose it isn’t surprising that I’d like a poem that begins by referring to the lover’s unfolding life as a book. In this case, the author is Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) who writes of his courtly, unrequited love for Beatrice Portinari in “La Vita Nuova.”
Here’s a humorous poem by Donald Hall that may or may not be read for hundreds of years:
“Chipmunks jump, and
Greensnakes slither. Rather burst than
Rather burst than
Not be with her.
Bluebirds fight, but Bears are stronger.
Bears are stronger.
We’ve got fifty
Years or longer. Hoptoads hop, but
Hoptoads hop, but
Hogs are fatter.
Nothing else but
Us can matter.”
This an excerpt from a Ogden Nash verse:
“Geniuses of countless nations
Have told their love for generations
Till all their memorable phrases
Are common as goldenrod or daisies Darling, when I look at you
Darling, when I look at you
Every aged phrase is new,
And there are moments
when it seems
I’ve married one of
Shakespeare’s dreams.”
Let’s end with a quote from “Much Ado about Nothing” by Shakespeare:
“Sigh no more ladies, sigh no more,
Men were deceivers ever,
One foot in sea, and one on shore,
To one thing constant never.
Then sigh not, so, but let them go,
And be you blithe and bonny,
Converting all your sounds of woe Into hey nonny nonny.”
Into hey nonny nonny.”
Sources: “The 100 Best Love Poems of All Times” edited by Leslie Pockell and “Love Poetry Out Loud” edited by Robert Alden Rubin.
