> I think many Christians (yoohoo!) view these passages with unease, as if "this stuff isn't supposed to be in Scripture." But why shouldn't it be, when God has given us these gifts of passion and tenderness and godly love to celebrate with our lifetime companions?

Exactly. The Puritans blew it in that regard, overcorrecting lasciviousness, and that mindset is still very strong in North America.

> Check on any poetry site and people tend to write of their feelings of hurt and loss, rather than of their exuberant love for a friend. That's sad.

Yes it is. Hence the in-joke Dave and I have between us, namely that any poem can be made automatically good by inserting the words "pain, anger, hate, rage" at some random point. Whether it makes sense or not, Gen X goths will suck it up. :-)

The nihilism that inspires such poetry is regretful. I would love to see more upbeat poetry, and it's a myth that "upbeat" must always be sappy or gushy. Read the two poems by Howard Agassiz Murrill, our own Howard's grandfather, in the Poetry Pool. There is such a joyous parental pride in those writings, and none of it is sappy at all.

I think what it is is that BAD poetry looks better if it's depressing than if it's rejoicing. If you have no substance to your words, if all you're doing is saying, "I'm happy, I'm happy, yay yay yay!" and, to include an obligatory figure of speech, "I'm happy like a pink bunny on a hillside!!!!" then, well, it just doesn't hit home like, "I'm depressed, demoralized, at the brink of sanity. I mourn like a guy whose family was all killed."

GOOD poetry can tackle any emotion with an engaging, compelling vividness. And I'd much rather meditate long on H. A. Murrill's "Tangled Threads," thinking long on what the poem *doesn't* explicitly say and filling in the gaps in the story myself, than I would like to commiserate with the anguish of a tortured soul.

What fascinates me possibly more still is the kind of poetry right in between: the bittersweet. I loved Kiki's recently posted poem for that reason. Bittersweetness is a beckoning call for thought and reflection like no other. I eat bittersweetness up, whether it's in poetry or in another form entirely -- short stories, novels, movies, you name it.

> Oh, and Sam quite possibly does not dig pretentious woolly poesies. Parody is most appropriate when the target of the parody actually DESERVES a sound thrashing.

Heh. I couldn't disagree with you more. In the spirit of imitation being the sincerest form of flattery, consider parody the most artful form of flattery.

While it might be more cynically satisfying to rip deserving prey into shreds by a caustic parody, the more worthy enterprise and satisfying venture is to parody something one admires and appreciates. Most of my favorite BAMs are of the books I liked the most.

So no, my little parody was absolutely not any sort of dig at the previous efforts. :-)