For Love
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“soft body under the bones of the bed” - Robert Creeley
In February 2025, a close friend gave me a collection of poems by Creeley. These poems are small moments full of heavy feeling. Creeley’s For Love, housed in this book, has become my preoccupation. The poem meditates on the idea of loving another: that other is “you,” in Creeley’s language. Creeley observes love to be a feeling that almost escapes signification; one stanza reads, “If the moon did not… / no, if you did not / I wouldn’t either, but / what would I not.” Here, words barely hold literal content. Creeley’s phrases exclude grammatical objects, and, to end the first line of the stanza, the poet uses an ellipsis—by definition an evasion of meaning. The only ‘meaning’ seems to be the connection between “you” and “I,” your actions and my actions: twoness. This relationship between the other/friend/partner/companion/viewer and the self is central to my practice. Love, as I define it, may be platonic, romantic, or both.
In February 2025, a close friend gave me a collection of poems by Creeley. These poems are small moments full of heavy feeling. Creeley’s For Love, housed in this book, has become my preoccupation. The poem meditates on the idea of loving another: that other is “you,” in Creeley’s language. Creeley observes love to be a feeling that almost escapes signification; one stanza reads, “If the moon did not… / no, if you did not / I wouldn’t either, but / what would I not.” Here, words barely hold literal content. Creeley’s phrases exclude grammatical objects, and, to end the first line of the stanza, the poet uses an ellipsis—by definition an evasion of meaning. The only ‘meaning’ seems to be the connection between “you” and “I,” your actions and my actions: twoness. This relationship between the other/friend/partner/companion/viewer and the self is central to my practice. Love, as I define it, may be platonic, romantic, or both.