WHAT’S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT?

Tomorrow is the day we celebrate love.  Some will do it with candy and flowers, others with dinner and, perhaps, dancing. Some will set the stage with candle light and romantic music. And, of course, we will exchange the valentine cards that express the love that we may not have verbalized throughout the year.

There are many famous sayings that define love, holding it up for us to examine like a prism in the sun.

Ø  Love is a many splendored thing, according to the song sung by Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, Andy Williams and others-- the song featured in the 1955 film, of the same name, starring Jennifer Jones and William Holden.

Ø  Love is a two-way street, at least that’s where we find love, according the 1968 R&B hit by the Moments.

Ø  Love is in the eye of the beholder. (Oh no—that’s beauty—but isn’t it true of love, as well?)

Ø  Love means never having to say you are sorry, according to Ali MacGraw in  Love Story. I never agreed with that one.  To me, love means saying you are sorry alot.

Ø  And then there is the classic definition that insists love is a verb and is defined by what it does. This familiar passage from 1 Corinthians is often chosen by brides to be read at their wedding.

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.

 These familiar statements are similar to Augustine’s writing strategy, existential sentences or definitions .  The idea is to create a sentence defining an abstract concept— like love---using concrete description and active words, zooming in on the important elements and characteristics, to create a vivid image and bring the abstract concept to life

 For example, Love is sitting side by side, shoulder to shoulder, watching a purple and pink    sunset in silence, because each knows what the other would say, if words were necessary.
 or 
Love is pouring ourselves into the empty glass that is held by our beloved to slake the thirst that only we can quench

Love means many things to different people.   But it always involves giving of self

The stories we love best include that kind of love, where someone is giving his everything for someone, to someone. All my favorite books and movies are that way. Each time I watch A Walk in the Clouds I think---Wow! How he loves her. 

 We all want to be that couple - the couple that seems to have that amazing kind of love. 

 We want to have what they have--but we don’t always remember that in order to have that love we must first give that love.

 In O.Henry’s story, The Gift of the Magi, each spouse gives up what is most important to buy a gift for the other.Don’t we all want that O-Henry-Magi-Gift kind of love?

And of course, when we want to speak of our love, poetry is the language we use (and we may supplement it with a love letter.)

Elizabeth Barrett Browning ‘s poem, How Do I Love Thee? is one of the most well-known love poems.  In it, she helps us to count the ways we love.

There are lots of books that teach us about love and show us remarkable and deep love.

There are books that show us parent-child love, husband -wife love, family love, love in the face of trials and dangers.

Here are several of my favorites.

Books for Children

Books for Adults

Celebrate this Valentine’s Day by rereading or reading for the first time one of these books.

Roses are red

Violets are blue

Love is in the air

Happy Valentine’s Day to you.

Today’s Deeper Writing Possibility

How does love make you feel? As you give love? As you receive love?

What does the storybook love look like that you have been waiting for all of your life?

What is missing from the love you are giving?  Receiving?

Write several definitions of love in several different genres or forms of writing.

What other genre or writing form will best describe your love?
Write  a poem or letter.

Write an existential sentence defining love.

What did you learn about love in the process of writing?

References

Augustine, D. (1975). The existential sentence: Opulence is having the Vienna Boys’ Choir sing “ Happy Birthday” to me.  In W. Sparke ( Ed.), Prisms: A self reader ( pp. 66-69). New York, NY: Harper’s College Press.

LOVE AND POETRY

My love affair with poetry began with this book.

The cover is not connected to the body of the book anymore and the back cover is missing.  When that happened, I don’t know, but it is obvious evidence of  the extent to which this book was loved.

The inscription indicates I was four years old when this book entered my life.

In my earliest memory of poring over the pictures and reading the poetry, I was five or six.

I loved this book and it led to a life-long  love of poetry –reading it and writing it. 

I loved the rhyme, the rhythm, the music, which seemed to be different in each poem, as compared nursery rhymes with their sing-song-same beat.

The texts were short. The idea that something I understood and related to could be said in such short ways, as opposed to the longer stories and information books that I also enjoyed, fascinated me. I had discovered a new type of writing!

Inadvertently, I memorized—learned by heart as we used to say— several of the poems. Not intentionally, but rereading and rereading committed the words forever to my head and heart.

I still know at least half of My Shadow by heart—I used to know all of it.

The other one I remember is The Swing.

One thing I notice now is that both of these favorites were by the same poet, Robert Louis Stevenson.  Even as an early reader my tastes, like now, were consistent.

These two were my favorites, although I liked them all.  The notion that someone else thought and felt like me, wondered about what I wondered about, saw what I saw, and that these thoughts could be written down for other people to read, was a life-changing,  an epiphany.

As I grew older, the poetry I loved changed, but never its presence in my life.

From Lawrence Ferlinghetti and e.e cummings I learned that poetry could break the rules and didn’t have to rhyme. My rhyming poems were never very successful — what a delight to discover I didn’t have to write that kind of poetry.

The Harlem Renaissance poets, Claude McCay and Langston Hughes,and the Black Arts Movement  Poets of the 60’s and 70’s , Amiri Baraka, Nikki Giovanni, and Sonia Sanchez and many others, taught me that poetry could move beyond my own considerations, concerns and feelings to examine the entire human condition, and social justice---or the lack thereof.

Nikki Giovanni remains my favorite poet and Ego-Tripping one of my favorite poems.

The list of  poets I love has expanded to include Billy Collins, Samuel Hazo and my  newest favorite Richard Blanco and several world poets--- Pablo Neruda, Naomi Shihab Nye, Wyslawa Szymborska.

I love poets who can express the everyday ordinary—or as Samuel Hazo would say the Holy Surprise of Right Now

Poetry can express the human condition, name and fight injustice,  voice our joys, comfort us in trials, and help us puzzle through life.

When my parents gave me this book as they gave so many others

as I gave my own kids---

as I gave my students--

they didn’t realize what they were putting into my hands, my head and my heart. 

We cannot predict the sparks we are creating, the passion we are igniting, simply by handing a child a particular book.

I am ever grateful that my parents gave me this one.

Today's Deeper Writing Possibility

What is your earliest memory of a book and reading?

How has that book affected your life?

Write a personal narrative of your reading history or of a book that your loved as a child.

How did this early reading lead to your current reading and writing?

THE PROBLEM WITH E-READERS

I loved my Kindle. I say that in past tense because shortly after I got my iPad in December, I broke my Kindle --I dropped my hair dryer on it. I was multitasking—drying and reading.  It didn’t really seem to hit that hard. My husband witnessed the incident and didn’t think it was hard enough to damage it either.  But the Kindle was dead.

In a panic, I immediately located the new one that is closest to the older version I own (Kindle 2) I am really attached to this older one, but after several phone calls to Amazon, I finally was forced to accept the fact that I can’t get that version anymore. The newer version, along with a new cover, is sitting in my cart at Amazon.

So why haven’t I bought it yet? 

I am allowing a trial period to see if I get used to reading on the iPad.  I definitely did not buy it for that purpose, and was not expecting to read for long stretches on this back-lit device. (By the way, I do love my iPad for lots of other reasons—that’s another post.)

In this Kindle-less stretch, I have found that turning the background black on the IPad and the text white, eliminates some of the backlit-glare. Still not Kindle-easy-on the eyes-----but better.

So I am waiting...       

Meanwhile as I transition to iPad reading, I have made several observations about reading on e-readers and tablets and other electronic devices.

They definitely change how we read and how we think about reading.  And…I love reading this way.

And YES for all the Luddites who are cringing at that statement, I still love books—real book, bound books.  I still buy lots and lots of them.

But  instead of taking a pile of books with me on trips, I can conveniently throw the iPad or Kindle in my purse,  replacing my Bible, two devotion books, several magazines, the one or two or three books that I am always currently reading, and the several I always take in case I finish those.  I love having lots of books with me to suit whatever reading mood  grabs me.

There are, however, some definite problems with reading on e-readers and tablets.

I am not talking moral issues—some folks act as if reading in some other form rather than a traditionally bound book is one of the seven deadly sins.  To them I say reading is reading is reading.  As time has progressed, how we engage in reading has changed. Cave walls. Stone tablets. Papyrus scrolls, codices, handwritten manuscripts on parchment paper,  mass produced books (Thanks Gutenberg.)… and now e-readers, tablets… and in the future it will continue to change…

In an NPR interview,  I heard the Fania Oz-Salzberger, co-author, along with her father, Amos OZ, of Jews and Words  make the following statement:

And by the way, I don't think we are worried about the future of the book  ... Because in many ways our bookishness has come now — you know, looking at it from antiquity until today — full circle, tablet to tablet, scroll to scroll. And back with the tablets and the scrolls with a vengeance.

 Click here to read or listen to the entire interview.

No, the problems for me are not moral issues, but practical ones.

First, I can no longer book-watch, no longer make judgments about what you are reading and what type of person you might be based on your book. I can no longer see your cover.  Now I have to ask, rather than simply peeking at your cover and letting my imagination run wild.

And sometimes, I get confused about the specific kind of reading I am doing.  For example, when reading on my computer.  which does not have a touch screen, I sometimes try to flip the page with my finger.  And when reading on my iPad, I sometimes try to push the non-existent "Next" button--a left-over Kindle habit.

And when I am reading a bound book and come to a new or unknown word, I wait for the definition to appear when I touch the word.  And then I have a bigger dilemma when it doesn’t.   I can’t seamlessly keep reading with a new word now safely tucked in the corner of my mind for consideration later.  Do I now check an online dictionary? Do I actually get up and get my oversized and comprehensive American Heritage?

Underlining and annotating  books is also a dilemma.  What does happen if you try to write on an iPad with pen? I haven’t done it yet, but I can see it coming.

For a funny look at further “book vs electronic device” confusions check out this video based on It’s a Book by Lane Smith.

Today’s Deeper Reading Possibility

What is your favorite way to read?
What is your experience reading with e-readers and tablets?

Based on the history of reading, what do you think reading will be like in the future?

Write a humorous poem or story about reading.