Tue., 2/14/12: Love Poetry to Exalt, Scorn and Seduce

Love Poetry to Exalt, Scorn and Seduce
Whether you're a hopeless romantic or a hardened cynic, there's a love poem for you. From the poems of antiquity, up through Shakespeare and into present day, bards have crafted paeans both honoring and lamenting the effects of romance. Poets seek the perfect words to describe the indescribable, what's most vexing and joyous and human about us. And everything - one-night stands, lifelong love, platonic admiration, regret, loathing and envy - is fair game. We'll talk about the many forms of this great tradition.

We want to hear about your favorite poems, too - you can post them on our Facebook page. Do you go in for Shakespearean sonnets? Or for the burned-out, testy ruminations of a lover scorned?

GUEST:
  Sue Weaver Schopf, associate dean for the Master of Liberal Arts program at the Harvard Extension School.

Sue Weaver Schopf's list of the love poem's many incarnations, with examples:

Spenser's Epithalamion
Shakespeare's "Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day"
Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "How Do I Love Thee, Let Me Count the Ways"
Theodore Roethke's "I Knew a Woman"

Shakespeare's "My Mistress' Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun"
John Frederick Nims' "Love Poem"
C. Day Lewis's "Come, Live with Me and Be My Love"

Emily Dickinson's "Wild Nights--Wild Nights!"
Christopher Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love"
John Donne's "To His Mistress Going to Bed"
Brian Patten's "Party Piece"

Robert Herrick's "Upon Julia's Clothes"

Shakespeare's "My Love Is As a Fever, Longing Still"
Robert Graves' "Symptoms of Love"

David Wagoner's "The Best Slow Dancer"
William Butler Yeats' "When You Are Old"

Edna St. Vincent Millay's "Grown-Up"
Philip Larkin's "Talking in Bed"

Marge Piercy's "To Have without Holding"