Symptoms of Love

Each Friday we provide the link to the blogger who is hosting a celebration of poetry around the blogosphere. At that site you can find the links to the many other blogs that are posting poems (new and old), discussions of poems, and reviews of poetry books. It’s also a great way to explore the internet.

Enjoy the festivities!

The host this week is Mary Ann Scheuer.

You can visit her here at Great Kid Books.


(Hopeless by Roy Lichtenstein, 1923-1997, American
Pop artist, whose works were influenced by advertising
and comic books)

It’s true. There’s no use denying it. Love really hurts.

That’s what all those achy breaky songs are about, all those hurtin’ and singin’ the blues songs like the following:

• Good Morning, Heartache
• Take These Chains from My Heart and Set Me Free
• I Fall to Pieces
• Crying over You
• Your Cheatin’ Heart
• Killing Me Softly with Your Love
• It Keeps Right On A-Hurtin’
• Blue Eyes Cryin’ in the Rain

and this classic:

• She's Acting Single (I’m Drinking Doubles)

and my favorite:

• How Can I Miss You When You Won’t Go Away?

SYMPTOMS OF LOVE

Love is a universal migraine,
A bright stain on the vision
Blotting out reason.

Symptoms of true love
Are leanness, jealousy,
Laggard dawns;

Are omens and nightmares —
Listening for a knock,
Waiting for a sign:

For a touch of her fingers
In a darkened room,
For a searching look.

Take courage, lover!
Can you endure such grief
At any hand but hers?

~ Robert Graves (1895-1985), English poet and novelist, famous especially for the historical novel set in the Roman Empire, I, Claudius