‘We text, text, text, our significant words’: Poems for those in long-distance relationships
When being physically close together is impossible, thanks to the pandemic. Feb 16, 2021 · 05:30 pm
Many people were not lucky enough to be with their loved ones this Valentine’s Day. If that was the case, or if you simply wanted suitable words to mark the day, then there are plenty of long-distance love poems that you can reach for, to share or to read for comfort.
Some of them can be found in unexpected places, such as
Song of Songs, a book found in the
Old Testament. But if you want an account of longing at a distance, a celebration of sexual intimacy, praise for lust and passion, then this is where you wll find it: “How much better is thy love than wine!” declares Solomon, “By night on my bed I sought him…” speaks his lover.
DEBBY HUDSON/UNSPLASH
MANY people are not lucky enough to be with their loved ones this Valentine’s Day. If that is the case, or if you simply want suitable words to mark the day, then there are plenty of long-distance love poems that you can reach for, to share or to read for comfort.
Some of them can be found in unexpected places, such as
Song of Solomon, also known as
Song of Songs, a book found in the Old Testament. But if you want an account of longing at a distance, a celebration of sexual intimacy, praise for lust and passion, then this is where you’ll find it: “How much better is thy love than wine!” declares Solomon, “By night on my bed I sought him…” speaks his lover. The lovers were not married and lived separately, and were perhaps in the early days of their courtship. The verse describes their visits to each other in erotic detail, and their yearning for each other when apart.
An illuminating comparison of Ann Petry s
The Street and Gwendolyn Brooks s
Maud Martha with Cynthia Kadohata s
The Floating World and Chang-rae Lee s
Native Speaker by You-me Park and Gayle Wald ( Native Daughters in the Promised Land: Gender, Race, and the Question of Separate Spheres,
AL 70: 607-33) establishes the extent to which minority literature represents the boundaries between public and private spheres in the United States and how these boundaries reinforce and overlap class and gender lines. The critics conclusion is that both the African American and Asian American groups are feminized (in the sense of being marked under the sign of the feminine).