Poetry Picnic Week 7: Love and Loss

My friends, I am Shashi and the host for the 7th week of creativity and enjoyment at

The Gooseberry Garden for Poetry Picnic Week 7.

We are going strength to strength and having an amazing time. Though I was not able to log on and read the poetry for some week but I strive to create this post an inspiring and giving you something to think about... hope I am doing it alright. But I promise you this, from next week onwards, I will try to plan better and give more time as we are trying to tweak the timeline of the posting to a little earlier to give me decent hours to work with this post in India, hope this will be fine with you my friends....

Love Potion
Painting by Koloman Moser  1915
I took this picture this July at Beveldere Museum Vienna

Well this week is going to be very interesting as we are going to write about an interesting topic i.e. ‘Love and Loss’ and anyone who has lived life, and or living life has something to say about it... so get your muse working overtime and tell you love how you feel, or tell your ex... How much it pains.... or just share how much your love people, friends and things around you and what loss means, when you lose something... anything.

But before that let me tell you what we are going to do next week...

Next week we are going talk about “Friends, relationships and everyone around” sharing the person’s who moulded us, made us what we are today, or someone that touched your heart or someone, who around you makes the world burst out in colours of rainbow...

Now coming back to our topic this week....

POETRY PICNIC WK 7: Love and loss

Sharing a lovely story of Robert and Elizabeth Browning... Both Elizabeth and Robert Browning believed that their love was eternal and some how I feel that it was... you judge for yourself.... as you read on...

Elizabeth Browning write in one of the most beautiful and love filled poetry that I have ever come across...  telling her husband Robert Browning...

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
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How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, --- I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! --- and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

___________________________
Elizabeth Browning (1806-1861)

After Elizabeth Browning’s death, Robert Browning wrote the following quote from Dante into his wife’s Bible, “ I believe and I declare – certain I am – from this life I pass into a better, there where that lady lives of whom enamoured was my soul.”

Though Robert Browning outlived his wife by 28 years, he never remarried. A certain Lady Ashburton once proposed to him but he declined, assuring her that his heart lay buried in Florence, and any marriage would be for the benefit of his young son.

Here is one of his lovely poetry I am sharing about love..

LOVE
____

So, the year’s done with!
(Love me forever)
All March begun with,
April’s endeavour;
May-wreaths that bound me
June needs must sever;
Now snow fall round me,
Quenching June’s fever___
(Love me forever)

_______________
Robert Browning
(May7th, 1812 – Dec 12, 1889)

Thanks for joining us to support poetry, poetry promotion, and poetry sharing here at The Gooseberry Garden Monday Poetry Potluck!!!

Happy (Belated) Birthday to October Babies,

including the following poets at our community, wishing you all the happiness and success in life, and many happy returns! You Rock! Please enjoy a grand time!

October 2, Morning, Morning

October 6, Life in Verse, Aynsley7

October 9, Caged By Freedom, Tweety

October 16, Talon, TALON

October 16, Celebrating A Year: Mairmusic

October 21:~Drew: ~Drew

How To submit your poetry?

Add your entry via InLinkz below by clicking on the blue button, and leave a comment in case it is your first time! It would be great if you could link back to us on your blog.

Weekly poetry collection starts on Sunday, 8pm (CDT), and will stay open till Thursday, 8pm (CDT), 96 hours for you to share your poetry with us...

Beginning Week 8, we may have our post up 6 hours earlier, which shall not hinder your participation! Thanks for the attention!

Please share your poetry, comment below and read some very talented artists and have fun! 

______

Shashi 
ॐ नमः शिवाय
Om Namah Shivaya

Image Credit: Google.com

POETRY PICNIC WK 2 : The Kiss

My friends, I am Shashi and the host for the Second week of creativity and enjoyment at The Gooseberry Garden for Poetry Picnic WK 2.

It’s my pleasure to be the anchor for this week’s poetry Picnic and I am grateful that all of you, friends, follow it so diligently. So every week, it’s my job to let your creativity take a leap and produce interesting thoughts in verses as well as read some beautiful creations from our very talented and creative friends.

This week is going to be very interesting as we are going to touch upon our first feelings of love. The heightened sense of being in love, the first lingering touch of our sense, passion and pleasure shared with someone so loved as to leave our ego’s our ‘me’ aside and surrender completely to ‘be’ in the moment. Live life of the moment as completely as one with the negation of our selves... Go back to your first love, first kiss and the first touch of someone you could almost die for ... Lets whisper to each other the sense of feeling that we felt at that time... I remember someone saying “ love is a feeling you feel that you are going to feel a feeling you never felt before...” So here you are friends, get your thoughts and feelings ready... to share with each of us.. and let us know in your own whispers... how did it all felt... “The Kiss”

But before that let me tell you what we are going to do next week...

We will be looking at ‘OBJECT’.... Sometimes, we get inspired to write about something that we see very closely.. and we write about it with our totality in seeing what we are seeing... A Tree, some mountain, train, an animal or just a sunset or the sea or a person walking by can inspire within, an epic poetry... so we will take a close look at the things happening around us and write about it... to share an interesting form of poetry that is all about an object...

Poetry Picnic WK 2 : The Kiss

Now coming to this week’s ‘The Kiss’ topic... here is a brief introduction about the most famous painting by Klimt... "The Kiss" a painting, I always wanted to see, touch and feel. This painting has inspired generations and for me, it was a great moment to spent an hour in the front of the painting “The Kiss” in the Beveldere Museum, Vienna this July.

The Kiss By Gustav Klimt

The Kiss (original Der Kuss) was painted by Gustav Klimt, and is probably his most famous work. He began work on it in 1907 and it is the highpoint of his so-called 'Golden Period'. It depicts a couple, in various shades of gold and symbols, sharing a kiss against a bronze background.

Two figures are situated at the edge of a flowered escarpment. The man is wearing neutral colored rectangles and a crown of vines; the woman wears brightly colored tangent circles and flowers in her hair. The couple’s embrace is enveloped by triangular vining and a veil of concentric circles.

In The Kiss, Klimt depicted a couple locked in an embrace. The rest of the painting dissolves into shimmering, extravagant flat patterning. This patterning has clear ties to Art Nouveau and to the Arts and Crafts movement and also evokes the conflict between two- and three-dimensionality intrinsic to the work of Degas and other modernists. Paintings such as The Kiss were visual manifestations of fin-de-siecle spirit because they capture a decadence conveyed by opulent and sensuous images.

The Kiss is a discreet expression of Klimt’s emphasis on eroticism and the liberation therein. The Kiss falls in line with Klimt’s exploration of fulfillment and the redeeming, transformative power of love and art. The Kiss deviates from Klimt’s frequent portrayal of woman as the lascivious femme fatale.
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Text and Image Source : Curtsy Wikipedia

Now here are some interesting poetry on “The Kiss” and hope that you all get inspired from it to produce your own unique thoughts in verses and share... The first one is by an amazing Persian poet and writer RUMI. I have loved his verses on love and been inspired since ages... and the second one is from another great poet Lord Byron.... hope you all enjoy it.

Some Kiss We Want

________________

There is some kiss we want with

our whole lives, the touch of

spirit on the body. Seawater

begs the pearl to break its shell.

And the lily, how passionately

it needs some wild darling! At

night, I open the window and ask

the moon to come and press its

face against mine. Breathe into

me. Close the language- door and

open the love window. The moon

won't use the door, only the window.

________________
By RUMI

From the Soul of Rumi – By Colemen Barks

THE FIRST KISS OF LOVE

_____________________
Away with your fictions of flimsy romance,

     Those tissues of falsehood which Folly has wove;

Give me the mild beam of the soul-breathing glance,

     Or the rapture which dwells on the first kiss of love.

Ye rhymers, whose bosoms with fantasy glow,

     Whose pastoral passions are made for the grove;

From what best inspiration your sonnets would flow,

     Could you ever have tasted the first kiss of love.

If Apollo should e'er his assistance refuse,

     Or the Nine be disposed from your service to rove,

Invoke them no more, bid adieu to the Muse,

     And try the effect, of the first kiss of love.

I hate you, ye cold compositions of art,

     Though prudes may condemn me, and bigots reprove;

I court the effusions that spring from the heart,

     Which throbs, with delight, to the first kiss of love.

Your shepherds, your flocks, those fantastical themes,

     Perhaps may amuse, yet they never can move:

Arcadia displays but a region of dreams;

     What are visions like these, to the first kiss of love?

Oh! cease to affirm that man, since his birth,

     From Adam, till now, has with wretchedness strove;

Some portion of Paradise still is on earth,

     And Eden revives, in the first kiss of love.

When age chills the blood, when our pleasures are past—

     For years fleet away with the wings of the dove—

The dearest remembrance will still be the last,

     Our sweetest memorial, the first kiss of love.

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By Lord Byron

Thanks for joining us to support poetry, poetry promotion, and poetry sharing here at The Gooseberry Garden Poetry Picnic!!!

How To submit your poetry?

Add your entry via InLinkz below by clicking on the blue button, and leave a comment in case it is your first time! It would be great if you could link back to us on your blog.

Weekly poetry collection starts on Sunday, 8pm (CDT), and will stay open till Thursday 8pm (CDT),  96 hours for you to share your poetry with us...

Please share your poetry, comment below and read some very talented artists and have fun! 

______

Shashi
ॐ नमः शिवाय
Om Namah Shivaya