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Andrew Marvell and His Coy Mistress
Today is the birthday of Andrew Marvell (March 31,1621 – August 16,1678), the author of one of the most anthologized love poems, To His Coy Mistress. I love the poem. I saw it described somewhere as a lover asking a virgin to sleep with him. But that is overlooking its wit, its playfulness, its ardour.…
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A Truth Universally Acknowledged: About Jane Austen
Janeites will love A Truth Universally Acknowledged, a collection of essays by 33 famous writers and critics acknowledging the genius of Jane Austen. Her admirers will have the pleasure of discovering their feelings shared by writers like Virginia Woolf, EM Forster, Somerset Maugham, CS Lewis, JB Priestley, Kingsley Amis, Martin Amis, David Lodge and critics…
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Justine: Lawrence Durrell’s romantic classic
Love — wanton, all-consuming, passionate love — is the theme of Lawrence Durrell’s classic romantic novel, Justine, set in the Egyptian port city of Alexandria just before the outbreak of the Second World War. Two couples are inexorably drawn to each other in a romantic entanglement that ends in death and separation and the birth…
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Marry Me: Bittersweet Updike
Can anyone write like John Updike? He could make even adultery lyrical. He does not turn a blind eye to the toll it takes. The lovers are exposed for what they are — cheating on their spouses and neglecting their little children. But Updike’s powerful prose captures the irresistible magnetism that drives two married people…
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Shakespeare in love: The youth and the Dark Lady of the Sonnets
Shakespeare’s sonnets are the greatest love poems in English literature, says The Times. And they are mostly homoerotic, says Bill Bryson in his book, Shakespeare. That makes them all the more remarkable. For, let’s not forget, as late as 1960 Penguin Books was tried for obscenity when it published Lady Chatterley’s Lover in Britain. Shakespeare’s…
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Love poems by Brian Patten
It’s Valentine’s Day. So here are love poems as simple and heart-felt as the finest love songs. Brian Patten knows how to touch hearts and minds. The Mersey Sound, a slim Penguin paperback featuring poems by him, Adrian Henri and Roger McGough published in 1967, is one of the bestselling poetry anthologies of all time,…
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James Fenton on Paris
Poems can be sexy and fun. Like this poem by James Fenton. I first read James Fenton way back when in the New Statesman. But let’s get on with the poem. In Paris With You By James Fenton Don’t talk to me of love. I’ve had an earful And I get tearful when I’ve drowned…
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