Close Talking: A Poetry Podcast

Episode #094 A Lovely Love - Gwendolyn Brooks - Reflections Week Ep. 2

04.26.2020 - By Cardboard Box Productions, Inc.Play

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Connor and Jack close out Poetry Month 2020 with a series of shorter episodes about short poems that can be comforting springboards to reflection and contemplation. In this episode they discuss Gwendolyn Brooks' meditation on love and draw connections between the poem's references to - and comments on - confinement and the present.

A Lovely Love

By: Gwendolyn Brooks

Let it be alleys. Let it be a hall

Whose janitor javelins epithet and thought

To cheapen hyacinth darkness that we sought

And played we found, rot, make the petals fall.

Let it be stairways, and a splintery box

Where you have thrown me, scraped me with your kiss,

Have honed me, have released me after this

Cavern kindness, smiled away our shocks.

That is the birthright of our lovely love

In swaddling clothes. Not like that Other one.

Not lit by any fondling star above.

Not found by any wise men, either. Run.

People are coming. They must not catch us here

Definitionless in this strict atmosphere.

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