{"product_id":"on-love-isbn-9780375702600","title":"On Love","description":"\"Life has to have the plenitude of art,\" Edward Hirsch affirms in his fifth volume of poems, \u003cb\u003eOn Love\u003c\/b\u003e, which further establishes him as a major artist. From its opening epigraph by Thomas Hardy and an initiating prayer for transformation, \u003cb\u003eOn Love\u003c\/b\u003e takes up the subjects of separateness and fusion, autonomy and blur. The initial progression of fifteen shapely and passionate lyrics (including a sonnet about the poet at seven, a villanelle about the loneliness of a pioneer woman on the prairie, and an elegy for Amy Clampitt) opens out into a sequence of meditations about love. These arresting love poems are spoken by a gallery of historical figures from Denis Diderot, Heinrich Heine, Charles Baudelaire, and Ralph Waldo Emerson to Gertrude Stein, Federico Garcia Lorca, Zora Neale Hurston, and Colette. Each anatomizes a different aspect of eros in poems uttered by a chorus of historical authorities that is also a lone lover's yearning voice. Personal, literary, \u003cb\u003eOn Love\u003c\/b\u003e offers the most formally adept and moving poetry by the author Harold Bloom hails as utterly fresh, canonical, and necessary.Edward Hirsch was born in Chicago in 1950 and educated at Grinnell College and the University of Pennsylvania. His first book of poems, \u003cb\u003eFor the Sleepwalkers\u003c\/b\u003e (1981), received the Lavan Younger Poets Award from the Academy of American Poets and the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award from New York University. His second book of poems, \u003cb\u003eWild Gratitude\u003c\/b\u003e (1986), received the National Book Critics Circle Award. His third, \u003cb\u003eThe Night Parade\u003c\/b\u003e (1989), and his fourth, \u003cb\u003eEarthly Measures\u003c\/b\u003e (1994), were both listed as notable books of the year by the \u003ci\u003eNew York Times Book Review.\u003c\/i\u003e He writes frequently for leading magazines and periodicals--among them \u003ci\u003eAmerican Poetry Review, DoubleTake,\u003c\/i\u003e where he is editorial advisor in poetry, and \u003ci\u003eThe Paris Review\u003c\/i\u003e--and he has received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, an Ingram Merrill Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Rome Prize from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. He teaches at the University of Houston.\"Colette\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy mother used to say, \"Sit down, dear,\u003cbr\u003eand don't cry. The worst thing for a woman\u003cbr\u003eis her first man--the one who kills you.\u003cbr\u003eAfter that, marriage becomes a long career.\"\u003cbr\u003ePoor Sido! She never had another career\u003cbr\u003eand she knew first-hand how love ruins you.\u003cbr\u003eThe seducer doesn't care about his woman,\u003cbr\u003eeven as he whispers endearments in her ear.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNever let anyone destroy your inner spirit.\u003cbr\u003eAmong all the forms of truly absurd courage\u003cbr\u003ethe recklessness of young girls is outstanding.\u003cbr\u003eOtherwise there would be far fewer marriages\u003cbr\u003eand even fewer affairs that overwhelm marriages.\u003cbr\u003eLook at me: it's amazing I'm still standing\u003cbr\u003eafter what I went through with ridiculous courage.\u003cbr\u003eI was made to suffer, but no one broke my spirit.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEvery woman wants her adventure to be a feast\u003cbr\u003eof ripening cherries and peaches, Marseilles figs,\u003cbr\u003ehot-house grapes, champagne shuddering in crystal.\u003cbr\u003eHappiness, we believe, is on sumptuous display.\u003cbr\u003eBut unhappiness writes a different kind of play.\u003cbr\u003eThe gypsy gazes down into a clear blue crystal\u003cbr\u003eand sees rotten cherries and withered figs.\u003cbr\u003eTrust me: loneliness, too, can be a feast.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eArdor is delicious, but keep your own room.\u003cbr\u003eOne of my husbands said: is it impossible\u003cbr\u003efor you to write a book that isn't about love,\u003cbr\u003eadultery, semi-incestuous relations, separation?\u003cbr\u003e(Of course, this was before our own separation.)\u003cbr\u003eHe never understood the natural law of love,\u003cbr\u003ethe arc from the possible to the impossible...\u003cbr\u003eI have extolled the tragedy of the bedroom.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWe need exact descriptions of the first passion,\u003cbr\u003eso pay attention to whatever happens to you.\u003cbr\u003eObserve everything: love is greedy and forgetful.\u003cbr\u003eBy all means fling yourself wildly into life\u003cbr\u003e(though sometimes you will be flung back by life)\u003cbr\u003ebut don't let experience make you forgetful\u003cbr\u003eand be surprised by everything that happens to you.\u003cbr\u003eWe are creative creatures fuelled by passion.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOne final thought about the nature of love.\u003cbr\u003eFreedom should be the first condition of love\u003cbr\u003eand work is liberating (\u003ci\u003ea novel about love\u003cbr\u003ecannot be written while you are making love\u003c\/i\u003e).\u003cbr\u003eNever underestimate the mysteries of love,\u003cbr\u003ethe eminent dignity of not talking about love.\u003cbr\u003ePassionate attention is prayer, prayer is love.\u003cbr\u003eSavor the world. Consume the feast with love.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Two (Scholarly) Love Poems\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI    \u003ci\u003eDead Sea Scrolls\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI was like the words\u003cbr\u003e              on a papyrus apocryphon\u003cbr\u003e                           buried in a cave at Qumran,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eand you were the scholar\u003cbr\u003e              I had been waiting for\u003cbr\u003e                           all my life, the one reader\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ewho unravelled the scrolls\u003cbr\u003e             and understood the language\u003cbr\u003e                           and deciphered its mysteries.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e2     \u003ci\u003eA Treatise on Ecstasy\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTouching your body\u003cbr\u003e        I was like a rabbi pouring\u003cbr\u003e                  over a treatise on ecstasy,\u003cbr\u003e                            the message hidden in the scrolls.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI remember our delirium\u003cbr\u003e        as my fingers moved backwards\u003cbr\u003e                  across the page, letter by letter,\u003cbr\u003e                            word by word, sentence by sentence.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI was a devoted scholar\u003cbr\u003e         patiently tracing the secret\u003cbr\u003e                  passages of a mysterious text.\u003cbr\u003e                             Our room became a holy place\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eas my hands trembled\u003cbr\u003e          and my voice shook\u003cbr\u003e                 when I recited the blessings\u003cbr\u003e                             of a book that burst into flames.","brand":"Knopf","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46303271682277,"sku":"NP9780375702600","price":15.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780375702600.jpg?v=1767734095","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/on-love-isbn-9780375702600","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}