[Steve Bucknell]

Excellent podcast from Alain de Botton (only 10 minutes, ignore end of Question Time at beginning of podcast). To prepare us all for Valentine's Day!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00y9v03

[Maryann Corbett]

Delightful. Thanks, Steve.

De Botton uses the word "adolescent" a couple of times in his discussions of the unrequited love so popular in literature. That made me remember this: A zillion years ago, when I first read the literature of courtly love, my first reaction was, These people sound like spoiled teenagers! Of course, given the life spans of those days, they may have been teenagers.

[Cally Conan-Davies]

It's arrived here already! No one near for me to wish and kiss, so Valentine kisses and sweet-salty wishes from me to every one here who I love!

The course of true love never did run smooth.

Love is the river with
currents and tangles,
hazards and rushes,
rocks and canoes,
a race of betrayal and fishes of
trust,
flattens and slows, grows as it widens, bends to the
sea.


in Love's name,

Cally

[Steve Bucknell]

Hail to thy returning festival, old Bishop Valentine! Great is thy name in the rubric, thou venerable Arch-flamen of Hymen! Immortal Go-between! who and what manner of person art thou? Art thou but a name, typifying the restless principle which impels poor humans to seek perfection in union? or wert thou indeed a mortal prelate, With thy tippet and thy rochet, thy apron on, and decent lawn sleeves? Mysterious personage! like unto thee, assuredly, there is no other mitred father in the calendar; not Jerome, nor Ambrose, nor Cyril; nor the consigner of undipt infants to eternal torments, Austin, whom all mothers hate; nor who hated all mothers, Origen; nor Bishop Bull, nor Archbishop Parker, nor Whitgift. Thou comest attended with thousands and ten thousands of little Loves, and the air is

Brush'd with the hiss of rustling wings.

Singing Cupids are thy choristers and thy precentors; and instead of the crosier, the mystical arrow is borne before thee.

[Carol Trese]

Originally Posted by Cally Conan-Davies

It's arrived here already! No one near for me to wish and kiss, so Valentine kisses and sweet-salty wishes from me to every one here who I love!

The course of true love never did run smooth.

Love is the river with
currents and tangles,
hazards and rushes,
rocks and canoes,
a race of betrayal and fishes of
trust,
flattens and slows, grows as it widens, bends to the
sea.


in Love's name,

Cally

Lovely. Thank you!

[Duncan Gillies MacLaurin]

John Walsh asks: "Have we lost the art of writing love letters?" A classic instance of a misleading headline as the article is a survey of the history of Valentine's Day rather than an attempt to answer the question.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-en...s-2213865.html

Duncan

[John Whitworth]

At least three of my poems are very obvious love letters. And one of them is to my wife, though I've never told her so.

Oh, and I just wrote a love letter from a fourteen year old boy to a fourteen year old girl. It uses the word vlog, one I have just learned. I was going to stick it up on Metrical, but a poem about Revolutions got there first, as it were.

[Gail White]

Is it just my imagination, or are there more happily married formalist poets than free verse poets?

[David Mason]

I've always said a rhyme was just two words kissing.

[Cally Conan-Davies]

I love that!

So a near-rhyme is two words flirting?

Cally