2007-03-01

Borrowing Romance

Some people think they can't be romantic because they aren't artists. Argue for your limitations and they're yours (i.e. we are only held back by the limits we give ourselves). When I got married I didn't feel my fledgling poetry deserved to be part of such a special day. So I looked through all the books on poetry I could find.

I copied down love poems from all the greats, and sent them via messenger to my bethrothed on our wedding day, one at a time. It was so romantic that she cried as she read each one. Her father finally came over making me stop because she kept ruining her makeup with her tears (or maybe the poems were just really bad, who knows?)

The point is to find a way. Find a way to be romantic. If Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats and Lord Byron could write it, you can borrow it, just give them the credit. And if you want to borrow the poem I wrote for Iszabella for your own child, go ahead (for Iszabella's Poem (click here). One word of warning though:

Steven Wright tried borrowing with disasterous results. He read a beautiful long letter of love and liked it so much he crossed out the name at the bottom and wrote his own. He sent it to his girlfriend but never heard from her again.

The problem was that the letter he read and sent to his girlfriend as his own WAS FROM his girlfriend. When he didn't hear back from her all Steven said was "I guess she didn't like what she wrote."

Have a great romantic day! Open your arms wide and embrace the world:



"Who is the happy Warrior? Who is he
That every man in arms should wish to be?
--It is the generous Spirit, who, when brought
Among the tasks of real life, hath wrought
Upon the plan that pleased his boyish thought:
Whose high endeavours are an inward light
That makes the path before him always bright;"


- from William Wordsworth's "Character of The Happy Warrior"
(written in 1806, when he was 36 years old)

No comments: