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I have a confession to make. I once thought, and perhaps still think Emily Dickinson's "If You Were Coming in the Fall" was my favorite love poem of all time. It's beautiful in its simplicity and the imagery is vivid. It also has a wonderfully musical meter that makes it incredibly pleasing to hear. But it is not the sort of poem that an intellectual should list as their favorite. It's somewhat juvenile stylistically and the symbolism therein is either very obvious or nonexistent. Understanding it didn't take a lot of effort. I don't sound more intelligent for being able to decipher what it means. Essentially, my love of this poem is as if I thought Taylor Swift's lyrics were better than Of Montreal's.

http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/emilydickinson/10463

Now, I may have a new favorite love poem. It is T. S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock". Eliot is the more intelligent choice, and I do think his poetry has more depth than Dickinson's. It still has the beautiful flow, vivid imagery, and simplicity that I liked in "If You Were Coming in the Fall", but it's the grown-up version. I read or hear "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", and instead of the warm fuzzy feeling I get from Emily Dickinson's poetry, I get a feeling of a deep stillness, a wisdom that I seldom find in myself. This poem is a love story for adults, for realists, for those who have loved and those who have lost, and for those who are still searching. It's a poem that embodies longing, a motif I've touched on in previous posts. It sees beauty in the everyday sadness of the last glowing embers of a passion. It sees that love is ironic sometimes and that nothing, as unique as it feels to you, is ever really as new to the world as it is to you. In essence, this isn't a love poem at all, not in the traditional sense. Regardless, it's beautiful and perhaps you, dear reader, should take a look.

http://www.bartleby.com/198/1.html

The Longing of Despereaux

And now I find myself searching for something about which to write. Searching...this reminds me of a line in The Tale of Despereaux, which I watched a couple of nights ago. It was something about "longing" and how Princess Pea was full of it. It's a very difficult feeling to describe, longing. Dictionary.com defines it as "strong, persistent desire or craving, esp. for something unattainable or distant" and I think this is about the best definition we'll see.

Everyone has experienced longing, I think. I've had this feeling lately, for a while now. I'm not sure what I'm longing for...it seems to hover just over the horizon, a dim light, glowing and pulsing, waiting for me to reach it. The best way I can think to explain it is through the song Something's Coming from West Side Story.

"Could be. Who knows? There's something due any day. I will know right away, soon as it shows... I got a feeling there's a miracle due. Gonna come true. Coming to me. Could it be? Yes it could- Something's coming, something good. If I can wait, something's coming, I don't know what it is..." Maybe some time soon it will reach me, or I'll reach it. Either way.

I don't think I'm finished discussing Despereaux just yet. First, I never did read the book, so don't criticize me. If the movie wasn't as good as the book, tant pis. I'm talking about the movie here. It was lovely. There are some great lines, and the film had such childish innocence, naivete and youthful optimism to it that it managed to lift my spirits. It also got me thinking; my aimless ponderings about the movie's most classic lines follow.

"If you know anything about fairy tales, then you know that a hero doesn't appear until the world really needs one" The world needs a hero now more than ever. When will our hero appear? We've pinned the job of hero onto many people throughout history, and we're always disappointed. The latest in this story is Barack Obama- he might succeed yet, but the expectations a country full of longing put onto him are impossible. He can't be everything we want at once.

"When your heart breaks it can grow back crooked. It grows back twisted and gnarled and hard." This is true...when someone hurts someone else, the hurt person is never really the same. Sure, they can get over it. Sure, their heart will heal. Sure, they'll move on. But in truth, there's always a bit of scar tissue. There's always that memory of the hurt, or there's regret, or there's a little voice saying they're not good enough. Maybe the person just grows jaded.

"The story said she was a prisoner but that wasn't totally true because she had hope and whenever you have hope, you're never really anybody's prisoner. " Barack Obama should have used this in his campaign. I, however, disagree with this quote. I think hope can actually make us into prisoners. We can hold out hope for something for so long that eventually, the hope is all we have left. We're trapped by the very thing that's supposed to free us.