Love poetry is not at the center of contemporary poetry. One reason that love poetry makes many poets check for the exits is that we trust art that is about ambiguous feelings and romantic love poetry isn’t.

Much great love poetry, then, is partly about how difficult love is. Sappho is the great love poet of the ancient world; indeed, she is the great poet of the ancient world—she was called the greatest at the time. In one poem she is lovesick and prays for Aphrodite’s help. She imagines the love goddess appearing to say, of the longed for beloved,

if she’s escaping

Soon she’ll be chasing; if she’s refusing

your gifts, she shall give them.

Note the volatility. She is not wishing for love perfected, but for the vector of the chase to change direction. Let her chase me instead of me having to chase her. At the end of the poem, she wishes to be done with “this merciless craving,” and echoing Homer who lived a century before, she asks Aphrodite to be, once again, “my own helper in Battle.”

The above is from the love chapter of The Wonder Paradox: Awe, Poetry, and the Meaningful Life, FSG, out in paper March 5, on sale now in hardback. Yes we changed the subtitle, I loved the old one but this is better. I’m posting on love on the run up to Valentine’s Day.

love,

Jennifer