How Rare This Is - Friendship, Intimacy, and Poetry

[raze]

Introduction
Poetry is, to many, a medium of love. What springs to mind are Shakespearean sonnets and awkward limericks in Valentine's day cards and how to impress your 7th-grade crush. Many famous poems are love poems; ask your most lyrically illiterate friend, and they probably at least recognize the line, How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. Love poetry has been around so long it is literally written in stone - check out this Ancient Babylonian tablet bearing 8th Century BC romantic verse. Even Poe, master of the macabre, wrote A Valentine.

Generally, romantic love is what we see featured in poetry. After all, it is arguably easier to craft an artistic metaphor for the color of his eyes or the fullness of her lips than, it's cool, how we both like 80's horror movies. Let that not diminish the importance of friendship, however. Anyone with a dear friend can tell you that friendship is a powerful thing - perhaps a thing we should be writing more about.

Friendship as Intimacy
Romantic love may be passionate and exciting and able to sweep you off your feet... but friendship will always be there to buy you ice cream and say, you were too good for him/her, anyway - and it won't say, I told you so even though it probably did. Friendship likes to nerd out with you watching goofy cartoons that he rolls his eyes about. Friendship will go mountain biking with you when she says it's "too dangerous." Friendship will go out to dinner with you and won't expect you to take off your pants when you're self-conscious about your food-gut - but it won't mind if you choose to let it all hang out, either.

Friendship is about the kind of intimacy that won't kiss your neck but will let you know if your breath stinks before the big interview. Friendship is the kind of intimacy where you can cry on a caring shoulder about your latest romantic flop, or ask a question about that weird thing happening with your bowel movements. Friendship lacks sexual expectations, lacks jealous complications, doesn't require grand gestures, and will never leave you if it doesn't get a ring after five years together. Friendship thinks it's cool just to be in your company. If that isn't intimate, I don't know what is.

Featured Poem: An Origin Story
Project V.O.I.C.E. founders Phil Kaye & Sarah Kay are two friends who found each other through a mutual gift for poetry, storytelling, and the spoken word. Because one is male and one is female, as if that matters in the game of love, many have speculated that they are a couple. The duo clears the air on the matter with their absolutely charming friendship poem, An Origin Story. You can listen/view below, and can read the lyrics here; I suggest doing both if you are able.

Some things to pay attention to:
- Notice how the two play off of each other, when they speak individually and when they speak in unison, and how this is used to emphasize the friendship theme.
- Consider their choice of going from their personal story, to the bigger story of well-known friendships throughout the ages, to pull the audience in closer.
- What effect did the shift in tone from light-hearted and goofy to serious and heartfelt have for you as a reader?

In the comments, please feel free to discuss your reaction to the poem, lines that resonated with you, and anything else this poem made you think of.

Optional Challenge
Is there a special friend in your life who you feel you need to say something to or about after reading/listening? Take this opportunity to write a poem of any format for or about them and share it in the comments. I'll share a silly little Haiku below, and will post a longer poem in the comments to get the ball rolling.

Fall Is My Favorite, And So Are You
Shall I compare thee
to a summer's day? - Hell no!
Sweat and mosquitos

sun burn and fruit flies
blown-out AC units and
dogs too hot to play.

You're more like reading
my favorite book, drinking
lemonade in shade.

Night-time frog chorus,
my feet in the river and
knowing fall will come.

Additional Reading
The Vinegar Club by Andrea Gibson
Love and Friendship by Emily Brontë
Helen Steiner Rice also wrote a number of poems about friendship, which you can find together in a collection here.

Comments

And as promised, a second friendship poem:

[raze]

Chicks, Man

Did you know, friend
that for baby chickens
instincts as simple as
eat
need to be conjured
by another bird's
pecking at the soil?

Regardless of my
ramblings on gender
you still could call me
chick
not for identity but for
needing someone's care
to care for myself

I'm about as articulate
as my chicken-scratch
penmanship at
love
but you should know:
I appreciate the gentle
persistent pecking.

To live, to grow, even
when the world has me
wanting back in my
shell.
Even when I'm broody
it's under your wing
that I am reminded:

Shells were made to be cracked.

[jjhunter]

I won't have time to read through and fully engage with this post until tonight, but wow - I am really excited, this looks amazing.

I see your challenge and up you a poem :D

[untonuggan]

Friendship a la mode

Your excitement is
catching, a wildfire --
no, a steady burning oven
baking nothing so mundane
as chocolate chip cookies;
culinary creations,
an egg taking shape:
a fusion of our mutual
delight.

[primeideal]

A great (if old-school) example of emotional intimacy through friendship poetry is "In Memoriam" by Tennyson. The lines about "It's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all" refer to the friendship of the poet and his dead friend, which in context is very cool for me to come across.

Neat!

[raze]

I did not know that! I can appreciate that poem in a new context now, thank you for sharing :)

[kaberett]

3am poetry from May, in raw form, but it was about friends. so.

---

i would wrap up the earth like a poem
and present it to you.
sonnets make up cities
and waterfalls are villanelles.
spondees and dactyls circumscribe landscapes
and springs and verdant sprigs of song burst forth.
i would cradle the glaciers and seas in verse--
here lies one whose name was writ in water--
and fill lakes with lists of all the ways they are blue.
i would describe the mountains in every language
we have ever spoken, or written, or thought
peaks rising from the tangles.
if I could present you a poem
i would wrap it up in earth
and we would wake the rest of our days
with clay in our mouths, sand in our eyes
and the glorious weight of the world in our hearts.

[alee_grrl]

I don't really have the time or spoons to really read this just yet, but I love what I've read so far and look forward to reading the rest tomorrow evening! :)

[steorra]

I'm not a regular reader of this community, but I got pointed here by kaberett, and I'm glad I did. I love the "Origin Story" video.

Here's an old poem-ish thing I wrote after finding a close friend after years of friendlessness. Usually I prefer poems that are metred, but this one isn't. Ever since I wrote it I've been ambivalent about whether it works better with or without the last line.

Fitting out
I don't fit in.
I fit out.
And that's okay.
I'd rather fit out than in.
But it can get lonely fitting out.
What? You too? Let's fit out together.
Or just fit together.

[fyreharper]

This is lovely :)

Re: And as promised, a second friendship poem:

[fyreharper]

I did not know that about chicks!

And that is a thing I have much appreciated about some of my friends, too.

[raze]

Ooh! Glad you stopped on by to share :) I think there's a place for freer verse, and it serves this poem well. I think I like it with the last line; it marries alienation and togetherness nicely.

[raze]

Oooh, beautiful imagery here, and I love the way it comes full circle. Thanks for sharing!

Re: I see your challenge and up you a poem :D

[raze]

Excellent - a like the comparison of friendship to something slowly and warmly coming to perfection instead of the wild blaze we more associate with passion/romance.

Re: And as promised, a second friendship poem:

[alee_grrl]

I love this! I had no idea I had so much in common with chicks. :)

[alee_grrl]

I did not know that. Most people quote it out of context and use it to refer to romantic love. I am not sure I've ever read the whole poem. I shall have to go do that. :)

[alee_grrl]

Beautiful.

[alee_grrl]

Welcome!

I love your little poem. I've never really fit in either. :) I like it with the extra line. It brings it all together.

[alee_grrl]

The Origin Story is perfect and so much fun to watch. <3

This entire post was wonderful. Friendships are so often underrated in our current culture, but there are the lynch-pin of my world.

I think that untonuggan's and my collaboration for today's post counts nicely as a friendship poem. It's about how friendship, community and poetry can heal old hurts.

[primeideal]

Yes, they do, don't they? Alas.

The entire poem is extremely long, so if it's not your thing, don't feel forced to put up with it. The section around that line (if you can control-F it) is very cool, the speaker is trying to work through some of his feelings about faith and nature (this is also the poem where we get "nature, red in tooth and claw"--chronologically we're right on the cusp of Darwinian evolution but people haven't quite figure that out yet so there's a lot of cool science ideas bouncing around).

The last few sections before the epilogue (especially the second-to-last) are also worth skipping to if the whole thing is not for you, or anybody else, in my view. :)

[alee_grrl]

Thank you! :)

[steorra]

Thanks for the feedback!

[steorra]

Thanks!

[kaberett]

I never said thank you at the time, and I ought to have! So: thank you <3

[kaberett]

Thank you! Alas I cannot find the journal post with the gloriously relevant conversation about chickenpunk, but I thought you might like to know that every time I see your icon I think of it.

[kaberett]

Thank you ♥

[jjhunter]

how is this now
the very first time i
am reading this?
it feels like pillars, like stalagmites
rising up to make tangible the stuff that leaks
from words we use for ceilings
internal and otherwise

the 'glorious weight' indeed
i think of the black earth you taught me to see
so rich and so fertile
the way you get volcano
to the heart of things pushing to come out