Love Poems 2017

Valentine from Princeton; Love Poems by Geoffrey Hill, Anne Bradstreet, Rosairo Castellanos, and W.S. Merwin.

Sent: Friday, February 17, 2017 6:30 PM

To: Ingrid Norton

Subject: Love Poems 2017

Best beloveds,

It's that time of year again: by custom, each year I send out a handful of my favorite love poems to friends, colleagues, and comrades on or around Valentine's Day (by custom, my email is also often a few days late). Given current events, it may seem like a frivolous thing to do, but I actually think it's just the opposite. I started these emails in February 2011 when I was living in Detroit during the pit of the economic recession: the corrupt recent previous mayor had recently been put in prison, and fraught community meetings led by the new mayor went on every month in different neighborhoods to discuss how to cope with abandonment, unemployment, blight, and overstretched city services. I was working on writing that grappled with trauma, racism, and inequality and, that drear February, I remember feeling very keenly how important it was to also clear space to meditate on love as a counterweight, as sustenance, to grappling with pain. I still believe that, and this year feel it more than ever: to clear a space to think on the different forms of love is its own resistance.