Black Box Poetry

As Sean said, we did curse poems in the last episode, so we're doing love poems next to get the bitter taste out of our mouths." In this episode, we talk about how love poems are always starting with the threat of sentimentality, always have an implied narrativity, and are always in defiance of Rilke's directive to his young poet addressee, "Don't write love poetry." In this episode, with attention to the fact that we all hate-to-love and love-to-hate love poems, and extra attention to some canonical love poems that are talking about LGBT relationships before the poets could openly talk about them, we talk about Walt Whitman's lesser-known "From Pent-Up Aching Rivers"; Elizabeth Barrett Browning's famous Sonnet 44 about married love; and Frank O'Hara's sweet "Having a Coke with You." (WW: https://whitmanarchive.org/published/LG/1891/poems/30) (EBB: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50538/sonnets-from-the-portuguese-44-beloved-thou-has-brought-me-many-flowers) (FOH: https://poets.org/poem/having-coke-you)