Love Poem
My clumsiest dear, whose hands shipwreck vases,
At whose quick touch all glasses
chip and ring, Whose palms are bulls in
china, burs in linen, And have no
cunning with any soft thing Except all
ill-at-ease fidgeting people: 5 The
refugee uncertain at the door You make at
home; deftly you steady The drunk
clambering on his undulant floor.
Unpredictable dear, the taxi drivers' terror,
Shrinking from far
headlights pale as a dime 10 Yet leaping before red
apoplectic streetcars --
Misfit in any space. And never on time. A wrench in
clocks and the solar
system. Only With words and people and love you move at
ease. In traffic of
wit expertly manoeuvre 15 And keep us, all devotion, at your
knees.
Forgetting your coffee spreading on our flannel, Your lipstick grinning
on
our coat, So gayly in love's unbreakable heaven Our souls on glory of
spilt
bourbon float. 20 Be with me, darling, early and late. Smash glasses --
I will
study wry music for your sake. For should your hands drop white and
empty All
the toys of the world would break. Romantic love can be defined as
a deep
devotion or affection for something or someone and is often shared
between two
people. When a love is mutual, lovers find themselves compelled
to communicate
the love between them, for example, expressing love in a solid
form such as
poetry. The rhythmic flow, vivid imagery, and ability to
encapsulate abstract
emotions makes poetry the perfect medium for expressing
romantic love. This type
of poetry is so popular; it has become a separate
genre called 'Love Poems.'
Traditionally, love poems render the beloved
as an ideal of perfection, placing
the lover on a pedestal. John Fredrick
Nims's "Love Poem" however,
beautifully contradicts this tradition by
describing a love that transcends
human faults. The poem is written to, and
about, a woman who possesses this kind
of love, and the speaker is a man
thinking about the adoration that he and
others feel for his beloved. The
poem's images present the dominant theme that a
genuine love and caring for
humanity--a graceful and beautiful soul--can exist
beneath an awkward
surface. Although the speaker offers images of the woman as
clumsy and
destructive, he also presents a gentle side to contrast her awkward
nature.
The images of the first stanza portray a woman's awkwardness with
daily
tasks. For example, the woman is a person "whose hands shipwreck vases,
/At
whose quick touch all glasses chip and ring, /Whose palms are bulls in
china,
burs in linen" (lines 2-4). In this hyperbole, the woman's hands
are
personified as if they move of their own volition. By doing so, Nims
absolves
his beloved of blame. The continuance of this theme through the
striking image
of "shipwreck vases" suggests a force spun out of control, as
if her
hands were chaotically destructive, as storms are to ships. This image
is again
reinforced by the idea of wild bulls breaking glass in china shops.
In the china
shop, her hands are powerful but out of place. The woman's
ineptness is further
described as "A wrench in clocks and the solar system"
(line 13),
making her clumsiness seem timeless and eternal. However, it is in
fact her
benevolent nature that transcends time and place. The second stanza
highlights
the contrast between the woman's ineptness to her external
environment and her
internal grace. She gives solace to others in
ne