Loving
by By Sullivan, Charles (EDT)
Category: Poetry , General

"Love is a crooked thing," W. B. Yeats wrote, "there is nobody wise enough to find out all that is in it." Love includes the romance of a moment and the devotion of a lifetime, both elation and grief, the ecstasy of being together and the pain of being apart. We may (or may not) love ourselves, one another, friends, children, parents, places, things; our feelings may be simple or very complicated. "How do I love thee?" asked Elizabeth Barrett Browning. "Let me count the ways."Loving: Poetry and Art embraces the astonishing variety and complexity of love as no other book has done. Among the 100 poems and songs and nearly 90 beautifully reproduced images, we find "legendary lovers" from Adam and Eve and Romeo and Juliet to John Lennon and Yoko Ono. The lover's fascination with the beloved's beauty, the compelling thrill of first love, the perils and delights of intimacy, the special bonding that is possible for couples - all are celebrated here. Love between parents and children is reflected in the anonymous "Lady Bug" poem as well as in Sylvia Plath's intensely personal lines, while the universality of human feelings is shown in poetry about creation and spiritual love, such as Gerard Manley Hopkins' "Glory be to God for dappled things."To create this unique and deeply moving book, Charles Sullivan has gathered outstanding examples of poetry and art from various cultures and historical periods, and presents them so that words and images go beautifully together. Here we discover or rediscover love poems by Dylan Thomas, Gwendolyn Brooks, Pablo Neruda, Robert Bly, Emily Dickinson, Ted Hughes, William Shakespeare, Erica Jong, Seamus Heaney, W. H. Auden, Takasaki Masakase, Anne Sexton, Nikki Giovanni, John Donne, Walt Whitman, and Edna St. Vincent Millay, among others. Their poetry is accompanied by paintings, sculpture, photographs, and other stirring images by such artists as Chagall, Rodin, Mary Cassatt, David Hockney, Michelangelo, Van Gogh, Georgia O'Keeffe, Whistler, Picasso, Monet, Romare Bearden, Renoir, Matisse, Red Grooms, and Mary Frank.Biographical notes give the reader useful background information about the artists and poets included in the book.Elegant and distinctive in design and content, Loving is a treasure for single persons, couples, and families, for the young and old alike. It will be enjoyed many times, in many moods. And as Yeats wrote about love itself, "one cannot begin it too soon."