{"id":66753,"date":"2014-02-14T18:27:21","date_gmt":"2014-02-14T23:27:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=66753"},"modified":"2014-02-14T20:07:42","modified_gmt":"2014-02-15T01:07:42","slug":"what-were-loving-the-love-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/02\/14\/what-were-loving-the-love-edition\/","title":{"rendered":"What We\u2019re Loving (The Love Edition)"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"heart<\/a>

Photo: Seyed Mostafa Zamani, via Flickr<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cAs usual, the love plot is the least convincing aspect of the book,\u201d said my friend, handing me a crumbling, loved-to-death copy of Barbara Pym\u2019s last novel, A Few Green Leaves<\/em><\/a>. It is not clear to me which part my friend found unconvincing\u2014the growing attraction between the meek, widowed rector Tom and the awkward anthropologist Emma, or the obstacles to their match. (E.g.: Tom\u2019s dreary sister, a visit from Emma\u2019s old flame Graham, or the Oxfordshire village full of aging gossips who have nothing better to do than monitor the hand-delivery of casseroles to local bachelors.) At any rate, I bought the whole thing, and I believed that Emma did, too. As Pym\u2019s narrator observes, \u201cEven the most cynical and sophisticated woman is not, at times, altogether out of sympathy with the ideas of the romantic novelist.\u201d \u2014Lorin Stein<\/b><\/p>\n

The weather yesterday was awful; this incessant wintry-mix business has got to stop. It has me thinking about Russian poems set during the siege of Leningrad, and last night my brain produced one of the most incredible jump shots since 2001: A Space Odyssey<\/i>\u2014from Boris Pasternak\u00a0to Guns N\u2019 Roses. The former has a poem that begins \u201cFebruary. Get ink and weep!<\/a> \/ To write and write of February \/ like bursting into sobs, with thundering \/ slush burning in black spring.\u201d Naturally, that led to\u00a0\u201cSo never mind the darkness \/\u00a0We still can find a way \/\u00a0\u2019Cause nothin\u2019 lasts forever \/\u00a0Even cold November rain.\u201d The latter seems somehow\u00a0right today\u2014it\u2019s a song, after all, about the vagaries of love. In fact, the\u00a0classic\u00a0Guns N\u2019 Roses catalogue is brimming with Valentine\u2019s Day\u2013appropriate songs: charged lyrics for lovers\u00a0(\u201cSaid, woman, take it slow \/\u00a0And it\u2019ll work itself out fine \/\u00a0All we need is just a little patience\u201d) and\u00a0the lovelorn (\u201cTo think the one you love \/\u00a0could hurt you now \/\u00a0Is a little hard to believe \/\u00a0But everybody darlin\u2019 sometimes \/\u00a0Bites the hand that feeds\u201d).\u00a0\u2014Nicole Rudick
<\/b><\/p>\n

Some advice: Run, do not walk, to your love\u2019s home. Take her by the hand and recite this Restoration-era poem about premature ejaculation<\/a>: \u201cThe Imperfect Enjoyment,\u201d by John Wilmot, the Earl of Rochester, a legendary libertine who slept his way around the Royal Court and succumbed, at age thirty-three, to venereal disease. Here, in words as lewd and depraved as anything uttered in 2014, he recounts one of his less inspiring performances. Making love, he can\u2019t quite contain himself, and \u201cIn liquid raptures I dissolve all o\u2019er, \/ Melt into sperm, and spend at every pore.\u201d His lady unsatisfied, he finds himself unable to get it up again, and lambasts his errant penis. \u201cWorst part of me, and henceforth hated most, \/ Through all the town a common fucking-post.\u201d If that doesn\u2019t make her swoon, gents, nothing will. \u2014Dan Piepenbring<\/b><\/p>\n

When Dan asked us to recommend love-themed staff picks, I was all set to talk about one of my favorite films, <\/i>the 1945 Powell-Pressburger <\/i>classic I Know Where I\u2019m Going!<\/em><\/a> Then I saw it described by Vanity Fair<\/i> as \u201ca cult among poetic bluestockings\u201d and my enthusiasm dimmed somewhat. But it deserves whatever following it has\u2014incidentally, Pauline Kael and Martin Scorsese are in the cult, too\u2014and I can\u2019t think of a more romantic movie than this tale of a willful young woman stranded in the Scottish Hebrides. (When I describe it like that, I can see why the poetic bluestockings are so excited, but don\u2019t let that put you off!) \u2014Sadie Stein<\/b> <\/p>\n

A few years ago I hosted a Valentine\u2019s Day party for which I insisted that everyone read a love poem aloud. I cannot say this made me popular, but it certainly made for some rapid cocktail consumption. After a few sonnets and even some haikus, the guy I had a not-so-secret crush on read Andr\u00e9 Breton\u2019s \u201cFree Union\u201d (L\u2019Union libre<\/i>, 1931), which begins, \u201cMy wife with hair of burning splinters \/ With thoughts of summer lightning \/ With hour-glass waist \/ My wife with the waist of an otter between the tiger\u2019s teeth.\u201d By the time he got to \u201cMy wife with her submarine molehill breasts \/ My wife with breasts of the ruby\u2019s crucible \/ With breasts of phantom of roses under dew,\u201d I wasn\u2019t the only one with a crush. \u2014Rachel Abramowitz<\/b><\/p>\n

Slate Vault\u2019s tweet<\/a> says it all: \u201cPound\u2019s directions to Yeats\u2019s house, drawn up for Robert Frost.\u201d As Dartmouth College\u2019s Rauner Special Collections Library blog comments<\/a>, \u201cWhen Pound was helping Frost make the connections he needed to establish himself as a poet, he set up a meeting for Frost with W.B. Yeats. This postcard is an artifact of the meeting.\u201d While the document has nothing to do with romance, Frost\u2019s reflections on his long-time \u201cbromance\u201d with Pound in our Art of Poetry interview<\/a> are full of wonderful tidbits. My favorite: \u201c[Pound]\u2019s review had something to do with the beginning of my reputation. I\u2019ve always felt a little romantic about all that\u2013that queer adventure he gave me.\u201d \u2014Justin Alvarez<\/b><\/p>\n

Alain de Botton\u2019s\u00a0The Romantic Movement<\/em><\/a> gives off the impression of being a literary Jolly Rancher. At least, the edition I have does: bright pink cover, slanted typeface, and the subtitle \u201cSex, Shopping, and the Novel.\u201d The story is simple: in London, Alice, a cripplingly reflexive dreamer\/ad exec in London meets Eric, a handsome, astute banker, at exactly the moment she was beginning to lose all hope of finding her one and only. Botton takes us through their relationship using graphs, philosophical references from Plato to Kierkegaard, and relentlessly honest insights on every aspect of being single and in a relationship. This is a love story told, not shown\u2014and much better for it. Had Botton followed that beginners\u2019 writers\u2019 workshop advice, we\u2019d have something blander than a Jolly Rancher, but no less trite. \u2014Nikkitha Bakshani<\/b><\/p>\n

In my mother\u2019s faith, you become a man at thirteen, and there\u2019s a ceremony to prove it. For my bar mitzvah, we hung colorful scrims from the rafters of the multi-purpose room in my synagogue. I had to dance the slow dances, and the girls had to say yes to me\u2014it was my party. That would embolden a certain kind of boy, but I stayed literally at arms length whenever I danced, my hands safely above the girls\u2019 hips. Three days later, Twista, Jamie Foxx, and Kanye West released \u201cSlow Jamz,\u201d and while I don\u2019t know for certain how that song would have changed my party, I know it changed my life: I requested it to be played for a girl on MTV\u2019s TRL<\/i> and my request was granted. I sat close to the television, as if it were one of those lights Alaskans use to survive winter. Every time I hear \u201cSlow Jamz,\u201d I think about the younger me, who believed the song would finally make a girl notice him. But how could it? I never told her I\u2019d requested it. \u2014Zack Newick<\/b><\/p>\n

Is it V-day or B\u2019Day? Single ladies, drunk-in-love ladies, and divas already know: tonight Cobble Hill\u2019s own Brucie will host a Beyonc\u00e9-themed Valentine\u2019s Day dinner. While entr\u00e9e names like Breastiny\u2019s Child and I Am Pasta Fierce don\u2019t exactly whet the appetite, the menu is pretty humorous<\/a> (if only because of how willfully tacky it is). \u2014Caitlin Youngquist<\/b><\/p>\n

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

\u201cAs usual, the love plot is the least convincing aspect of the book,\u201d said my friend, handing me a crumbling, loved-to-death copy of Barbara Pym\u2019s last novel, A Few Green Leaves. 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