Fifty years ago, John Stallworthy compiled The Penguin Book of Love Poetry, offering categories such as "Persuasions" and "Celebrations," but also "Aberrations" and "Desolations," reminding us that love, like the rest of life, is difficult and confusing. Here, Helms offers his own arguments, lusty, comical, often intrinsically problematic, expressions of the conflicted gaggle of beings who are human, mammals, both confined and freed by the need to stay alive and (pro)creative-all with a sense of joyous wonder.
-Richard Fenton Sederstrom, author of Sorgmantel and Icarus Rising
To the question, "What's the point of love poems," McCraw Helms responds, "Why sing, when you can simply talk?" Poems, he declares, "conceive what would have stayed unborn, being our language making love." This poet casts an expansive net, depicting many aspects of love: sorrow-filled longing, inter-species bonding, sexual pleasure (including masturbation), conjugal love, Christ's love, even abortion as a pained gift of love to the too-deeply damaged unborn.
Note that the cover image here, Satan Watching the Endearments of Adam and Eve, by William Blake, richly enacts some of the complexities of love: Lust, envy, and regret encountering the overwhelming beauty and innocence of naked, loving delight.
-Mary Messick
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Poetry