[lit-ideas] The Love Poem Project

Following my last love poem post: Love Poem # 325, a Lit-Ider wrote me off list 
worried about my mental stability.  I was flattered to learn that someone 
thought I might have been mentally stable at some point in my life.  I 
celebrate my insanity as God's blessing.  But let's not go into that right now. 
 My conviction that God is a raving maniac would scandalize many and I don't 
want a millstone tied around my neck, not until I've finished this Love Poem 
Project.  It's inspired by Kenneth Koch whom I've admired for many years, 
especially his "The Art of Love" -- a brief selection will show how wonderful 
it is if you're not familiar with it:  

"Tie your girl's hands behind her back and encourage her
To attempt to get loose.  This will make her breasts look
Especially pretty, like the Parthenon at night.  Sometimes those 
    illuminations
Are very beautiful, though sometimes the words 
Are too expected, too French, too banal.  Ain't youse a cracker,
Though?  And other poems.  Or Freemasonry Revisited.  Anyway.
Tie her up.  In this fashion, she will be like Minnie Mouse, will look
Like starlight over the sensuous Aegean.  She will be the greatest thing
    you ever saw.
However, a word of advice, for cold September evenings,
And in spring, summer, winter too, and later in the fall:
Be sure she likes it.  Or only at first dislikes it a little bit.  Otherwise
You are liable to lose your chances for other kinds of experiments...."


This is true love poetry.  Unfortunately it goes on for 27 pages.  And although 
I love it absolutely, I confess I've never read it straight through, not in one 
sitting.  My project is to write much shorter love poems -- 1001 of them to be 
exact --  poems that busy important people like us can read in one toilet 
sitting.  I require of myself two uncompromisable principles: first, that the 
tropes, language and prosody be surprising and highly inappropriate for any 
poem -- much less a love poem; and secondly, that inspite of the inherently 
unpoetic nature of the poem, at it's heart (or somewhere) there's a moment of 
aha! about what we call "love."  Which might be very different for different 
people.  Now anyone who knows me knows that I could never write 1001 poems, not 
even about myself, so I invite everyone to submit their own wretched love poems 
.  We'll combine them all together.  We'll make Julie K. collect them and get 
them published.  She's the only one too busy to do anything.


Sincerely (yeah, right),
Mike Geary
Memphis

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