love poems: part 3

My friend Kenny says that his ambition as a poet is to write poems that are Marxist theory. I think my ambition as a poet may be to write political essays that are actually love poems.

Everything Arundhati Roy (pictured) writes, reads like a love poem to me. She does not separate her heart from her politics. Her humanity from her brilliance and piercing analysis. June Jordan's essays are love poems. So are some of Michael Ventura's. And several passages by Edward Said.

When I began to write Shilling Love, I wanted to expose the facile trivialization of the word love in American society. To explain how soft words are a luxury bought with hard currency. After I'd performed it a couple of times, I began to describe it as a love poem. Now, I think it may be the closest I've come to my ambition above - without setting out to do anything of the kind.

I tell people Eater of Death is a love poem.
For the Women of Project Pride is a love poem.
This Is How It Feels is a political poem.