| February 14, 2004 Valentine's Day. A great deal of love poetry is written on and for this day. Some of it is wonderful. Much of it is dreck. The dreck is mostly the result, I think, of trying to "be poetic" -- to express love in some artificial language that is supposed to make it more wonderful. While the love poems that many people tend to quote ("Come live with me and be my love/and we will all the pleasures prove") are in language that seems stilted and artificial, it was generally pretty conventional when it was written. It was common. It was ordinary. I think love poetry, to be effective both as an expression of love and as a poem, needs to have real roots in that ordinariness that typifies love. Ordinariness? Take for example the Valentines' tradition in my house. A great many years ago, trying to make an early-relationship impression on the woman who would be my wife, I made Valentine's Day reservations at a restaurant she loved, a high-end hibachi steakhouse on the highway near my apartment. Despite my reservations, the place had gotten backed up, so that at 7:15PM, my 7PM reservation entitled us to a 1-hour wait. My lady is not much for waiting. We left. The first eatery we came to on the drive away was KFC. Given the time, the day, the location, we figured we weren't likely to do much better, so we got some original recipe and biscuits and shared our love over paper napkins. At least there were free refills; that's a metaphor for something, I'm sure. Well, that night I learned that impressiveness isn't what shows love - the making do is where the heart shows itself off. Every year since then, we've invited the Colonel (Sanders, that is) for Valentine's Day, and we have a great time. This year? Well, while chicken is still the order of the day (I've got a great coupon squirreled away), I benefited from another expression of married love: I got some bowling shoes. See, I joined a bowling league this year, the first time I'd bowled seriously in more than 10 years. My shoes, which had spent the hiatus in the garage, had deteriorated tremendously, but were still -- barely -- functional. So I've been making do. But. After watching me make do, and after hearing the jibes, my family went in together on making me a better man: my wife purchased the shoes, and my daughters covered them with adhesive hearts. Each of them showed more love for me in those simple actions than you could possibly imagine. See, that's what poetry is to me: the extrapolation of the extraordinary from the ordinary. The sighting of unending love in a pair of bowling shoes. My family gave me a perfect love poem this year. It just happens to be one I can wear on my feet when I'm attempting to convert a 3-10 split. Look around you. There's love right there on the kitchen counter. List what you see there, and you just might have a great love poem. David Vincenti Advisor, Center for the Performing Arts at DeBaun Auditorium www.debaun.org; www.davidvincenti.com
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