Poet's Choice

I think I am bicycling across an Africa of green and white fields

Always, to be near you, even in my heart

When I'm awake, which swims, and also I believe that you

Are trustworthy as the sidewalk which leads me to

The place where I again think of you, a new

Harmony of thoughts! I love you as the sunlight leads the prow

Of a ship which sails

From Hartford to Miami, and I love you

Best at dawn, when even before I am awake the sun

Receives me in the questions which you always pose.

Kenneth Koch (1925-2002) puts ships in landlocked Hartford and a walnut detective in the opening simile of this early poem (from his new Selected Poems, well edited by Ron Padgett), not just to mock literary solemnity -- that is incidental -- but to offer "You" the pleasure of something genuine, as well as genuinely amusing.

That is a tradition in love poetry. William Shakespeare, like his model Philip Sidney (and Sidney's model Francesco Petrarca), also lets his impatience with standard language suggest a high standard for both courtship and poetry: