Love If We Can Stand It

In this collection of his best poems, the product of 45 years of writing and rewriting, the relatively unknown American poet Bruce F. Kawin explores many aspects of love, from the romantic to the metaphysical and from sex to mourning. The breadth of voice and form is masterful, and the poems – which touch on the subjects of dreams, desire, death, nature, religion and language – are bold and evocative. As complex as they are, they relate plainly to real life. Although influenced by poets from Kenneth Koch to Denise Levertov and, before them, the “Pearl” poet, George Herbert, Robert Browning and Gertrude Stein, the poems are entirely original and belong to no school. Their intensity, inventiveness and playfulness should appeal to a variety of readers. The poems, whose speakers in most cases could be male or female, are open to readers of any gender or age. The only requirement is to take love and poetry seriously. The book includes a sestina from the point of view of a harried woman, a sonnet sequence reimagined as a slide show, a menu of potential love stories, a threnody about mixed feelings for God when a friend dies, a celebration of one-syllable words, a lesbian epic set in modern Greece and reimagined versions of “The Mummy's Ghost” and what really happened after “Bride of Frankenstein,” all of them charged with startling, moving and convincing visions of love. With his unique tone and subject matter, his good stories, his striking insights and his fresh, vivid language, Kawin reinvents and revives the love poem.