Happy Day-After-Valentine’s Day! I hope you all managed to fit in a little quality time with your significant others, or at least ate a bunch of chocolate.<\/p>\nHappy Day-After-Valentine’s Day! I hope you all managed to fit in a little quality time with your significant others, or at least ate a bunch of chocolate.<\/p>\n
In keeping with the general romantic and indulgent mood, I thought I’d share one of my all-time favorite love poems, “I Knew a Woman”<\/strong><\/a> by Theodore Roethke<\/strong><\/a>. I first encountered this poem in an “Introduction to Literature” class as an undergrad, and it made quite an impression. I loved the contrast. The sing-songy rhythm of the Fletcher Spenserian stanzas<\/strong><\/a> (did I really just say that?) and the dashes of humor and self-mockery belie the profoundly sensual imagery (“She moved in circles, and those circles moved”) and the genuine emotion behind such statements as “I’m martyr to a motion not my own.” <\/p>\n Even now, fifteen years later (dude, did I really<\/em> just say that?) bits of it still float unbidden to the surface of my brain at odd moments. Read the right poem at the right moment, and that’s what happens. Scarred for life.<\/p>\n Here’s a particularly sexy bit of it:<\/p>\n How well her wishes went! She stroked my chin,
\nShe taught me Turn, and Counter-turn, and Stand;
\nShe taught me Touch, that undulant white skin;
\nI nibbled meekly from her proffered hand;
\nShe was the sickle; I, poor I, the rake,
\nComing behind her for her pretty sake
\n(But what prodigious mowing we did make). <\/p><\/blockquote>\n