Forget the chocolates, flowers and fluffy teddies, dogs and almost any other kind of animal imaginable (even though they are cute) – if you really want to win the heart of your valentine, then love poetry is definitely the way to go. According to a recent study, most members of the fairer sex would like nothing better as a Valentine’s gift than to receive a love poem or letter from their significant other. Unfortunately, the male population are less than forthcoming in the literary department, with 6% resorting to plagiarism of existing romantic poetry to make a favourable impression – well, at least they’re trying. (Although, to be fair to men, embarrassment may be a major factor in restraining the poet within – Aberystwyth University is conducting some rather intriguing research into whether reading love poems get us hot under the collar.)

No need to take such drastic measures – The Reader Online can come to the rescue for your romantic quandaries with a very special Valentine’s poem. Whether it’s for an unknowing object of desire or a long-term lover (or alternatively if you’re still waiting for Cupid’s arrow to strike, for yourself), nobody will be able to resist these beautiful words courtesy of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Of course if you’d prefer to select your own Valentine’s poem, there are plenty to choose from on Poets.org. Also, The Poetry Archive and The Times Online have teamed up – together with a number of very famous names and poets – to offer recordings of love poems that can be sent to a loved one. So boys (and girls), there really is no excuse!

Lovesight

When do I see thee most, beloved one?
When in the light the spirits of mine eyes
Before thy face, their altar, solemnize
The worship of that Love through thee made known?
Or when in the dusk hours (we two alone,)
Close-kissed and eloquent of still replies
twilight-hidden glimmering visage lies,
And my soul only sees thy soul its own?

O love, my love! if I no more should see
Thyself, nor on the earth the shadow of thee,
Nor image of thine eyes in any spring,–
How then should sound upon Life’s darkening slope
The ground-whirl of the perished leaves of Hope,
The wind of Death’s imperishable wing?

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)

he appeared to himself to have a distinct recollection of the whole, and taking his pen, ink, and paper, instantly and eagerly wrote down the lines that are here preserved. At this moment he was unfortunately called out by a person on business from Porlock, and detained by him above an hour, and on his return to his room, found, to his no small surprise and mortification, that though he still retained some vague and dim recollection of the general purport of the vision, yet, with the exception of some eight or ten scattered lines and images, all the rest had passed away like the images on the surface of a stream into which a stone has been cast.

Kubla Khan

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree :
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round :
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree ;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh ! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover !
A savage place ! as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover !
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced :
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail :
And ‘mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean :
And ‘mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war !
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves ;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice !
A Damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw :
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight ‘twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome ! those caves of ice !
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware ! Beware !
His flashing eyes, his floating hair !
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
S.T. Coleridge, 1816.

Coleridge’s explanation of his inspiration for the poem may clarify some of its more unusual aspects. The opening lines ‘In Xanadu did Kubla Khan / A stately pleasure-dome decree’ immediately immerses the reader in a strange and unfamiliar environment, which the poem then goes on to explore in more detail as it progresses. Images of majestic ‘greenery’ in the poem soon give way to the supernatural, and a chasm ‘Haunted / By woman wailing for her demon-lover!’, before concluding with a warning to ‘Beware!’ the ‘flashing eyes’ of the demon, and to receive him with holy dread’. The subtitle: ‘A Vision in a Dream: A Fragment’ reminds the reader that the poem is not completed exactly as Coleridge had envisaged: the alleged interference from someone calling at his house left the dream ‘scattered’ within Coleridge’s mind: the remnants of which make up the entirety of Kubla Khan.

The conversation progressed to consider the personal within the fictional and to what extent the ‘author’ is part of the character(s) in their novels. Morrison, who has written his memoirs in And When Did You Last See Your Father? (the film, starring Colin Firth has just been released) doesn’t believe that there is much of ‘him’ in his latest work, “Memoir is written from your own experiences, fiction’s abot the lives you haven’t had, imagining other lives and getting into the consciousness of those lives.” However Coe admits to drawing on personal experiences for the (female) protagonist in his novel, “Maybe it’s because I haven’t written an autobiography or my memoirs, I have had no outlet for writing about my own life so it manifests itself in my fiction.”

It’s not as straight-forward as drawing a line between memoir and fiction though, is it? Surely a writer has only their own experience to draw on? Yet Coe says, “Writing allows you to get into a perspective different from your own”, even if it isn’t your ‘real’ perspective – the perspective that you have attached to your sense of identity – how could you possibly write (convincingly or otherwise) about something you have never experienced, seen, read, heard or touched. Is it a question of interpretation? When in ‘character’ an author is able to position themselves in a different mode of interpretation, to imagine a different response from normal but at one and the same time there must be the realisation that this interpretation has also come from within, from knowledge and experience.

Reading is then another form of interpretation. Issue 27 of The Reader features an essay by Raymond Tallis on Ian McEwan’s Saturday, it also discusses the position of the contemporary novelist and the aim of literary fiction, “to leave a more lasting and different kind of impression” rather than just giving readers a “rat-a-tatting good read”. Coe made a pertinent comment about the relationship between reading and writing, “You don’t realise what book you’ve written until people read it”, interesting when you consider the extent of readerly interpretation on bringing the book to life. Thoughts in the author’s mind are deciphered into words on a page, those words are then unravled in the reader’s mind, with their own set of experiences construing a meaning. Authors interpret our world in their fiction, we interpret their fiction in our world.

Posted by Jen Tomkins