Our Favorite Writers Recount the Most Romantic Things They’ve Ever Read
Benjamin Samuel, co-editor of Electric Literature
“Advice to Lovers” by Robert Graves
There’s this Robert Graves poem called “Advice to Lovers.” I don’t care much for the poem, which makes Love feel too simple and quaint. But there’s a line that’s stuck with me: “Whistle, and Love will come to you”.
Like a lot of poetry, that line is a little vague and could use some clarification. Should we whistle come-hither, or catcall, or should we hang around with our lips pursed and expect Love to eventually stumble into us? (That was my kissing strategy in middle school, by the way). Really what I think Graves is getting at is that if you’re ready for Love, willing to nurture and care for it, it’ll pay off.
The thing is, though, Love itself has become vague. We use one word for this ideal, for what is often an emotional El Dorado, but in reality Love is different for each of us. It can be easy or elusive; sometimes it’s a process or a battle or something we regret. The trouble comes when we confuse love with passion. In a particularly brilliant Daily Rumpus, Stephen Elliot eloquently made the distinction. Passion is just what gets a relationship started, the “booster rocket that gets the ship into orbit until there’s no gravity and it can float.” Love, then, is something else, something dynamic and adaptive. Love isn’t magic, it isn’t a fairy tale, it’s a relationship. And relationships, as Graves suggests, need attention and commitment and work—just floating, as Stephen later suggests, won’t do either. If Love were a simple, singular state experienced the same way for each of us, then we’d fall in love once and stay together forever. But penguins we are not.
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