Teen Intern Review: Love Poetry Out Loud

Today I gave my summer intern a chance to write a review for the blog.  Victoria is a poet, going into her senior year of high school, and she’s been assiduously reading a book of poetry from the Sheraden branch. 

Here’s her review:

Well, considering I like to write poems, I use poems others made as a reference; even if I have not written any happy poems to show how I felt at the current point moment in time.

The book I’m reading, Love Poetry Out Loud (edited by Robert Alden Rubin), mostly contains poems about a happy subject (love). I mostly write dark poems so reading this was quite new to me.  Now I know love even has a dark side to it.

One of my methods for figuring out if a poem is dark or happy is looking at the title. For example,  my poem “Where Am I?” it gives the sense of self-awareness like most poems I made. Some poems tell of good and the bad in relationships, like the poem “When We Two Parted” by George Gordon and Lord Byron.  It has a strong sense of the narrator’s longing for his/her lover to return to him/her.  Here are the poems I mentioned as examples of the two types of poems… dark and light:

 

Dark:

Where am I?

by Victoria Jones

Where am I?
I can’t see
Am I in the dark?
As my heart and I depart…
What am I?
Am I a loner?
Am I am friend… or a fragment of my own suffering…?
I can’t see my life

Where am I?
There’s no love here…
As I curled up into a ball
Because I’m scared to be alone here again
Am I dead or am I alive?
I want to go home away from their grasp
I feel like something is feeding off of my pain…
Someone help! Please save me…!

Where am I?
I ask over and over
But no answer
I don’t know what to do
I can’t do this
As days goes by
I grow more and more lonely
As I remember the things I once had

Now I only have time to think of my mistakes

Light:

When we two parted

 by George Gordon and Lord Byron

WHEN we two parted

In silence and tears,

Half broken-hearted

To sever for years,

Pale grew thy cheek and cold,

Colder thy kiss;

Truly that hour foretold

Sorrow to this.

The dew of the morning

Sunk chill on my brow—

It felt like the warning

Of what I feel now.

Thy vows are all broken,

And light is thy fame:

I hear thy name spoken,

And share in its shame.

They name thee before me,

A knell to mine ear;

A shudder comes o’er me—

Why wert thou so dear?

They know not I knew thee,

Who knew thee too well?

Long, long shall I rue thee?

Too deeply to tell.

In secret we met—

In silence I grieve,

That thy heart could forget,

Thy spirit deceive.

If I should meet thee

After long years,

How should I greet thee?

With silence and tears

But in the end the only thing all poems in common is understanding how the writer feels towards everything around them. The things we share can be understood by others if you just give them some time.

Let us know what you think in the comments–what’s your favorite love poem?  You can click on the book jacket to see what other poems are contained in Love Poetry Out Loud, and you can check out these other books of love poems from the library:

Love: Selected Poems by e. e. cummings, illustrated by Christopher Myers 

Some great poetry with just as great oil paint and collage illustrations.

Crush: love poems by Kwame Alexander

What does it feel like to fall in love for the first time?  Kwame Alexander describes it through poetry.

Dizzy in Your Eyes: poems about love by Pat Mora

Each poem in this book has a different narrator, and they are all about being in love.