I Cry Love! Love! Love!
Subtitle
Poems
According to Joanna Dales: "Drawing its title from William Blake’s hymn of praise to sexual love ('Visions of the Daughters of Albion'), this little book inscribes the word 'love' in 22 of its 33 poems. They celebrate delights of being in a body. But not just sex — love of God, of friends, parents, children, pets, poems, even food, all are savored. I am struck, as well, by this poet’s range of thought, feeling and allusion: Li Po to García Lorca, May Swenson, Mary Oliver and Richard Dawkins, to Blake, the Bible and Shakespeare (in the delightful ballad 'If Will Hath a Will, Anne Hathaway'). ... Helms has a way of making complex ideas accessible. His poems enhance and deepen our intellectual as well as sensual pleasures. Read them slowly ('mouth these verses, mumble them, suck their juice,' he suggests); they will enrich you."
Bio
Randel McCraw Helms is professor emeritus of English at ASU.
Praise for this book
Fifty years ago, John Stallworthy compiled 'The Penguin Book of Love Poetry,' offering categories such as 'Persuasions' and 'Celebrations,' but also 'Aberrations' and 'Desolations,' reminding us that love, like the rest of life, is difficult and confusing. Here, Helms offers his own arguments, lusty, comical, often intrinsically problematic, expressions of the conflicted gaggle of beings who are human, mammals, both confined and freed by the need to stay alive and (pro)creative — all with a sense of joyous wonder.
Richard Fenton Sederstrom Author of "Sorgmantel" and "Icarus Rising"
