Fri 7 Jan 2011
Oh, sweet victory of love
Posted by PJ under poetry
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I have been searching for a certain poem for decades, ever since an English professor read it aloud in class in a freshman English class. He also handed out mimeographs of it (yes, I am old), but it was spread over two pages (though not a long poem, the print was BIG). Somehow, though I loved this poem with much loveness, I lost the second page and the last two stanzas. I only discovered this several years after the class when the poem came to mind and I went looking.
“No problem,” thinks I, “since the first page has the name of the poem and the poet. Love Poem by J. F. Nims should not be so hard to find.”
This was before the worldwide web, children, back in those misty days of low tech information retrieval. I went to the library and looked for a book of poetry by Nims. They had none. I even tried at the UCLA Research Library when I was there doing research for something else. They had a book! Alas, not the one containing Love Poem.
A few years later, once the internet really got cranking, I looked for Love Poem by J. F. Nims. Nothing. Oh, there were references to Mr. Nims (he edited Poetry magazine), but nothing on this poem. As if the poem never existed. But I remembered it, and I still had that pathetic half of a mimeographed poem. Periodically, when I thought of it, I’d put Mr. Nims’s name into Google. Still no Love Poem. I was not obsessive in my search, even if a bit obsessed.
And then today, I thought of the first line of the poem, the line that had remained with me all these years: “My clumsiest dear, whose hands shipwreck vases…” So I plugged that into Google. And, lo, there it was! On Poemfinder.com! I had tried poem finder before, I’m sure of it, but clearly it must have been before June 9, 2009.
I’m not ashamed to say that I got misty-eyed when I read the complete poem once more. Maybe I should be, but I’m not. After all these years, I still love it. After all this build up, I hope it doesn’t disappoint you. Love Poem by J. F. Nims:
