September 1, 2005

• The Chaste Love Affair Poetry Challenge

  
  

  Richard Brautigan, a tortured albeit popular Beat poet in the 1950′s and 60′s, had what he once called a “chaste love affair” with a young lady named Linda Webster. She was several years his junior and therefore prohibited by her parents to be involved with him.  Emily Dickinson for many years wrote love letters and poems to a married man that she cared for deeply but her religious beliefs would never allow for impropriety.

  
  

  For the purpose of this exercise, I will define a “chaste love affair” as a romantic relationship that is unable to be consumated due to social or religious mores.  As of late, I have become enamoured with Richard Brautigan and wrote a poem recently on the subject of a chaste love affair.  The poem will be attached. 

  
  

  I am going to “tag” several people, but even if you are not tagged, please feel free to try it.  Should you wish to accept the challenge and write a poem, please let me know and please let me read it.  Maybe the subject matter will get your creative juices flowing.  Here’s mine:

  
  

  Open Stage

  
  

  I want to see you naked
  is what he said and I knew
  that we weren’t talking
  about the theater anymore.
  Our eyes locked on to each other
  lost in hunger and forgotten dreams
  and I saw him for the first time,
  not as an instructor of knowledge
  dispensing wit and wisdom about the arts
  but as a man, a beguiling creature
  finely muscled, skillfully cragged
  in the full glory of his middle age,
  eyes the deep blue of cornflowers.
  I felt color rise to my cheeks,
  cast my eyes politely downward
  and felt his fingertips brush mine
  for a moment as he cleared his throat
  and whispered, I want to see your soul
  naked on the stage.

  
  

   

  • 5:47 pm
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