{"id":36559,"date":"2012-08-02T16:11:19","date_gmt":"2012-08-02T20:11:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=36559"},"modified":"2012-08-03T14:09:43","modified_gmt":"2012-08-03T18:09:43","slug":"love-and-poetry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/08\/02\/love-and-poetry\/","title":{"rendered":"Love and Poetry"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

My first date with Luke started at four in the afternoon\u2014and at midnight, we were still going. Sitting on stools at Frank\u2019s Cocktail Lounge (a bar that feels like a holdover from the seventies, right down to the occasional fedora-wearing patron), we were bent over the carefully folded piece of paper Luke had just taken out of his wallet. As he smoothed it out on the bar, I saw the seven poems, in tiny font, that he carried with him at all times\u2014and I braced myself.<\/p>\n

This guy wasn\u2019t just so charming and handsome that I\u2019d already trembled once or twice, near him. He was also \u201chaunted by verse.\u201d That was a description an English professor had once applied to me, after I\u2019d run into her while crossing campus one night; drunkenly, I\u2019d begged her to remind me which poet had written, \u201cLet us roll all our strength and all our sweetness up into one ball.\u201d (Andrew Marvell, for the record.)<\/p>\n

Robert Frost famously said poetry provides \u201ca momentary stay against confusion.\u201d Seeing Luke\u2019s poems didn\u2019t make me one bit calm, however. We\u2019d been doing a high-wire conversation act for quite a while by then, but it wasn\u2019t till I saw his aesthete\u2019s bible that I noticed just how far off the ground I was.<\/p>\n

Luke, a med student, was ten years younger than I was, but that kind of age difference hadn\u2019t stopped me in the past. My friends thought my preference for younger men was a sign of commitment phobia. I grumbled that it was really a sign that younger men were hotter. And yet I knew they had a point; I knew I was still scared of getting too close to anyone. After all, even I couldn\u2019t take the twenty-five-year-old fireman I\u2019d dated entirely seriously, to say nothing of the twenty-four-year-old jazz musician who played his saxophone on cruise ships, or the twenty-three-year-old guy who did something akin to fetching water for producers at NBC.<\/p>\n

I had no choice but to take Luke seriously, though, because he was serious about literature. During our first phone chat, he described an essay in which Auden postulated that there were two kinds of poets: the argument-makers and the beauty-makers. Then Luke asked me if I\u2019d read anything good lately, and I gushed about how the Russian husband-and-wife team Pevear and Volokhonsky made the characters in their version of Brothers Karamazov <\/em>rise up off the page, whereas Constance Garnett\u2019s interpretation left Dostoevsky\u2019s creations flat. Luke, in turn, talked about how Nietzsche could sound wildly different, depending on who\u2019d translated him; Walter Kauffman was best, he thought.<\/p>\n

After that conversation, if Luke had asked me to meet him on railroad tracks with some twine, I probably would\u2019ve considered it. (How often did I meet a man who both was a poetry lover and had his act together? Approximately never.) Instead, he invited me to see The Tempest<\/em> at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Of course, I said yes.<\/p>\n

Our plan was to rendezvous two hours before show time in front of BAM\u2019s grand old opera house, and then find a place to get coffee. I\u2019d been hoping Luke would look worse in person than in his pictures\u2014it would take some of the pressure off. As I approached the beaux arts building, people were clustered on the wide marble steps in groups of two and three, like blackbirds in a winter tree. A solitary man waved.<\/p>\n

My heart fell: He didn\u2019t look worse. He looked much better.<\/p>\n

Down the block, over steaming white cups, time passed almost imperceptibly. It had been years since I\u2019d been on a date without retreating inward after ten or fifteen minutes. At the performance, too, Luke was a perfect companion: a presence but not a distraction, looking over occasionally to smile or whisper something during the break between scenes. And after the curtain fell, his face was vulnerable with enthusiasm when he asked me to get a drink.<\/p>\n

At Frank\u2019s, around the corner, everyone else was watching the Oscars, but Luke and I barely noticed\u2014until the montage from Bright Star<\/em> came on. \u201cThe Johns Keats biopic!\u201d I exclaimed. \u201cDid you see it?\u201d He hadn\u2019t so much as heard of it, which surprised him; Keats was one of his favorites. He used his phone to send himself a reminder to watch it.<\/p>\n

Shortly after that, we were discussing existential crises when I mentioned a recent professional setback that had deeply demoralized me. I mentioned that Keats and the idea of negative capability had helped. That\u2019s when Luke handed over his seven-poem vade mecum and showed me \u201cOde on Melancholy\u201d\u2014Keats\u2019s exhortation to transform emotional pain into something more poignant and less excruciating by focusing it on the world\u2019s beautiful things, like a rose or a lover\u2019s eyes.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d taken that advice before. Whenever I\u2019ve managed to burn down all the structures in my mind\u2014leveling everything, so there\u2019s no stable refuge left, no order or meaning\u2014I go over to the Brooklyn Promenade in the evening, and the sun dying out over the water helps raise my internal architecture back up. Given the option, however, I\u2019d take a lover\u2019s eyes.<\/p>\n

After we left the bar, Luke grabbed my hand, and gave me an excited, searching look. \u201cI already know how much I like you,\u201d he said. \u201cSo I could get on the subway now \u2026 or I could go home with you.\u201d<\/p>\n

That was an odd way to put it, I thought. But it wasn\u2019t merely his choice of words that had flummoxed me. I liked this person\u2014and in my experience, when a person likes you back, he doesn\u2019t push you to sleep with him on your first date.<\/p>\n

But he looked so earnest, waiting for my response with those big eyes. Maybe Luke was being wildly impetuous because he felt the same intense connection that I did? After hesitating for another moment\u2014or six\u2014I went home alone.<\/p>\n

At the end of our second (even more enjoyable) date, there was a similar power struggle outside Carnegie Hall. \u201cWhat are you worried about?\u201d he said, smiling in a way that made it impossible not to smile back. \u201cI\u2019ll want to keep spending time with you no matter what happens.\u201d<\/p>\n

No matter what happens didn\u2019t exactly reassure me, I told him.<\/p>\n

He asked me what would.<\/p>\n

\u201cMemorize \u2018To His Coy Mistress\u2019 and recite it next time I see you,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

The next day, he e-mailed me a Wallace Stevens poem that ends erotically, saying that since we humans are imperfect, delight has to come from \u201cflawed words and stubborn sounds.\u201d<\/p>\n

I responded with the best poem I\u2019d come across in a while: \u201cFailing and Flying,\u201d by Jack Gilbert. \u201cEveryone forgets that Icarus also flew,\u201d Gilbert writes. \u201cIt’s the same when love comes to an end, or the marriage fails … Icarus was not failing as he fell, but just coming to the end of his triumph.\u201d<\/p>\n

A poetry exchange ensued\u2014he sent more Stevens, Auden, Frost; I sent Yeats, Roethke, Rilke. Not Romantic poets\u2014but how romantic what we were doing seemed! Within three weeks of meeting Luke, I was envisioning the old farmhouse he and I would live in; he\u2019d practice medicine in the nearby college town while I took care of the garden, the animals, the babies.<\/p>\n

Those kinds of fantasies shocked me. I\u2019d long been more or less positive I didn\u2019t want kids, and the mere thought of living with another person usually made me deeply uneasy. Though I wanted to love and be loved, to support and be supported, to grow and help grow, getting truly close to anyone had always seemed dangerously risky. True intimacy has always seemed fraught with peril, and depending on another person like a guarantee of despair. I\u2019ve lost so many people\u2014my mother, who never said good-bye before dying of cancer when I was eight; at least a dozen housekeepers, who came and went from my childhood home constantly, sometimes after no more than a season had passed; a best friend, who also never said good-bye before he committed suicide when I was twenty-six. And my father was someone I seemed to lose on a nightly basis; we were always getting into screaming fights that ended with him ignoring me for days. Getting too close to anyone has never seemed especially wise.<\/p>\n

But then Luke came along\u2014and what was this new, or restored, feeling in me? Trust? Hope? Or was it just daring? Maybe I was more willing to take chances because of that big career blow, the one I\u2019d told Luke about on our first date. I\u2019d begun looking for easy ways out of my writing life, frankly, and becoming a wife and mother suddenly seemed like an interesting option.<\/p>\n

But maybe my change of heart was less about circumstance and more about Luke. Maybe he was just as exceptional as he seemed\u2014a former All-American athlete with a body like a Rodin who was, despite his seemingly conventional aspirations, surprisingly unconventional. He also wasn\u2019t hamstrung by his intelligence or artistic inclinations, like so many other men that I\u2019d dated; he wasn\u2019t self-loathing. He was kind, maybe even loving. He wanted to help people. He understood how important literature is for survival. A once-in-a-lifetime person.<\/p>\n

True, Luke had said, in his first e-mail to me, that he was \u201clooking for someone interesting to take out from time to time,\u201d which didn\u2019t sound like much. But we were in constant contact, and we\u2019d been out more than from time to time. And, of course, there was the poetry.<\/p>\n

A month into our dalliance, Luke and I had just put dinner in the oven when things heated up on my love seat. Pushing him back, I said, \u201cI may be an artsy bohemian type, but casual sex isn\u2019t my thing. I want to know what you\u2019re thinking.\u201d<\/p>\n

He laughed uncomfortably. \u201cSo we\u2019re having a serious conversation, huh? I might need a beer for this.\u201d<\/p>\n

He got one, and we sat down again. He reminded me that he planned to leave New York as soon as he finished school, in two years, and that he wouldn\u2019t be able to even think about starting a family until he finished his residency. (We\u2019d never discussed kids; he must\u2019ve just assumed my clock was ticking.) I laughed uncomfortably then and said that I hadn\u2019t been thinking that far ahead.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll the same, I really enjoy our time together,\u201d Luke continued.<\/p>\n

My throat tightened.<\/p>\n

A little more than a week later\u2014after a night out with his friends that I took as a sign of progress\u2014Luke was the one who initiated the serious conversation. Since there was a \u201cclear expiration date\u201d on our affair, he said, wasn\u2019t it wise not to go on? That way, we wouldn\u2019t have to endure a far more painful breakup when the time came.<\/p>\n

Because we were on the same poems, I\u2019d assumed we were on the same page. I thought Luke had been signaling the loftiness and grandeur of his feelings for me with verse. But I should\u2019ve done a closer read. That first Stevens poem he sent me is about how one\u2019s desires for unity can never be perfectly realized, about how even sexual union is an \u201cimperfect paradise.\u201d And yet bodies come together more easily than minds. Of course, some part of me must have known our thing was doomed. Why else would I have sent a poem about what happens when an affair comes to an end? It\u2019s just that I never thought it would end so quickly.<\/p>\n

These days, I get down to the water to watch the sun sink below the horizon as often as I can; I watch more intently as it disappears, while the world sails calmly on. I think about what Keats said: \u201cWhen the melancholy fit shall fall \u2026 glut the sorrow on a morning rose.\u201d And I remind myself that it\u2019s only because I\u2019m able to feel such strong emotion that I can also feel such delight.<\/p>\n

Maura Kelly is the author of <\/em>Much Ado About Loving<\/a>: What Our Favorite Novels Can Teach You About Date Expectations, Not So-Great Gatsbys, and Love in the Time of Internet Personals.\u00a0Her essays and op-eds have appeared in <\/em>The Atlantic, the<\/em> New York Times, the<\/em> Guardian, the<\/em> New York Observer,\u00a0The Daily Beast,\u00a0Marie Claire,\u00a0New York Press,\u00a0Nerve,\u00a0the<\/em> Washington Post, Penthouse,\u00a0Poets & Writers, three literary anthologies, and other publications.\u00a0
<\/em><\/p>\n

[tweetbutton]<\/p>\n

[facebook_ilike]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My first date with Luke started at four in the afternoon\u2014and at midnight, we were still going. Sitting on stools at Frank\u2019s Cocktail Lounge (a bar that feels like a holdover from the seventies, right down to the occasional fedora-wearing patron), we were bent over the carefully folded piece of paper Luke had just taken […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":386,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4393],"tags":[8322,664,8323,6749,2111,165,3110,3988,2160],"class_list":["post-36559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-person","tag-andrew-marvell","tag-dating","tag-jack-gilbert","tag-john-keats","tag-love","tag-poetry","tag-robert-frost","tag-romance","tag-w-h-auden"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nLove and Poetry by Maura Kelly<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"August 2, 2012 \u2013 My first date with Luke started at four in the afternoon\u2014and at midnight, we were still going. Sitting on stools at Frank\u2019s Cocktail Lounge (a bar that\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/08\/02\/love-and-poetry\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Love and Poetry by Maura Kelly\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"August 2, 2012 \u2013 My first date with Luke started at four in the afternoon\u2014and at midnight, we were still going. Sitting on stools at Frank\u2019s Cocktail Lounge (a bar that\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/08\/02\/love-and-poetry\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-08-02T20:11:19+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2012-08-03T18:09:43+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/orangebook.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"590\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"259\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Maura Kelly\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Maura Kelly\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"11 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/08\/02\/love-and-poetry\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/08\/02\/love-and-poetry\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Maura Kelly\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/840deeb032a4d66a4cd62cef6046618b\"},\"headline\":\"Love and Poetry\",\"datePublished\":\"2012-08-02T20:11:19+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2012-08-03T18:09:43+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/08\/02\/love-and-poetry\/\"},\"wordCount\":2154,\"commentCount\":12,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/08\/02\/love-and-poetry\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/orangebook-300x131.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Andrew Marvell\",\"dating\",\"Jack Gilbert\",\"John Keats\",\"love\",\"poetry\",\"Robert Frost\",\"romance\",\"W. H. Auden\"],\"articleSection\":[\"First Person\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/08\/02\/love-and-poetry\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/08\/02\/love-and-poetry\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/08\/02\/love-and-poetry\/\",\"name\":\"Love and Poetry by Maura Kelly\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/08\/02\/love-and-poetry\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/08\/02\/love-and-poetry\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/orangebook-300x131.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2012-08-02T20:11:19+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2012-08-03T18:09:43+00:00\",\"description\":\"August 2, 2012 \u2013 My first date with Luke started at four in the afternoon\u2014and at midnight, we were still going. Sitting on stools at Frank\u2019s Cocktail Lounge (a bar that\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/08\/02\/love-and-poetry\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/08\/02\/love-and-poetry\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/08\/02\/love-and-poetry\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/orangebook.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/orangebook.jpg\",\"width\":\"590\",\"height\":\"259\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/08\/02\/love-and-poetry\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Love and Poetry\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"description\":\"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"width\":696,\"height\":696,\"caption\":\"The Paris Review\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\",\"https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview\",\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview\"]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/840deeb032a4d66a4cd62cef6046618b\",\"name\":\"Maura Kelly\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/5ea1408430f4fdd59d081217bf90df30d7499b33da8b2e8900ac6be5027f9333?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/5ea1408430f4fdd59d081217bf90df30d7499b33da8b2e8900ac6be5027f9333?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Maura Kelly\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/mkelly\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Love and Poetry by Maura Kelly","description":"August 2, 2012 \u2013 My first date with Luke started at four in the afternoon\u2014and at midnight, we were still going. Sitting on stools at Frank\u2019s Cocktail Lounge (a bar that","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/08\/02\/love-and-poetry\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Love and Poetry by Maura Kelly","og_description":"August 2, 2012 \u2013 My first date with Luke started at four in the afternoon\u2014and at midnight, we were still going. Sitting on stools at Frank\u2019s Cocktail Lounge (a bar that","og_url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/08\/02\/love-and-poetry\/","og_site_name":"The Paris Review","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","article_published_time":"2012-08-02T20:11:19+00:00","article_modified_time":"2012-08-03T18:09:43+00:00","og_image":[{"width":590,"height":259,"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/orangebook.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Maura Kelly","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@parisreview","twitter_site":"@parisreview","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Maura Kelly","Est. reading time":"11 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/08\/02\/love-and-poetry\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/08\/02\/love-and-poetry\/"},"author":{"name":"Maura Kelly","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/840deeb032a4d66a4cd62cef6046618b"},"headline":"Love and Poetry","datePublished":"2012-08-02T20:11:19+00:00","dateModified":"2012-08-03T18:09:43+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/08\/02\/love-and-poetry\/"},"wordCount":2154,"commentCount":12,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/08\/02\/love-and-poetry\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/orangebook-300x131.jpg","keywords":["Andrew Marvell","dating","Jack Gilbert","John Keats","love","poetry","Robert Frost","romance","W. H. Auden"],"articleSection":["First Person"],"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"CommentAction","name":"Comment","target":["https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/08\/02\/love-and-poetry\/#respond"]}]},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/08\/02\/love-and-poetry\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/08\/02\/love-and-poetry\/","name":"Love and Poetry by Maura Kelly","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/08\/02\/love-and-poetry\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/08\/02\/love-and-poetry\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/orangebook-300x131.jpg","datePublished":"2012-08-02T20:11:19+00:00","dateModified":"2012-08-03T18:09:43+00:00","description":"August 2, 2012 \u2013 My first date with Luke started at four in the afternoon\u2014and at midnight, we were still going. Sitting on stools at Frank\u2019s Cocktail Lounge (a bar that","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/08\/02\/love-and-poetry\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/08\/02\/love-and-poetry\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/08\/02\/love-and-poetry\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/orangebook.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/orangebook.jpg","width":"590","height":"259"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/08\/02\/love-and-poetry\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Love and Poetry"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","name":"The Paris Review","description":"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization","name":"The Paris Review","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","width":696,"height":696,"caption":"The Paris Review"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview"]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/840deeb032a4d66a4cd62cef6046618b","name":"Maura Kelly","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/5ea1408430f4fdd59d081217bf90df30d7499b33da8b2e8900ac6be5027f9333?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/5ea1408430f4fdd59d081217bf90df30d7499b33da8b2e8900ac6be5027f9333?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Maura Kelly"},"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/mkelly\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/386"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36559"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36559\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36661,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36559\/revisions\/36661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}