20 pages • 40 minutes read
Robert CreeleyFor Love
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1962A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
The Moon
With the exception of the heart, the moon is arguably one of the most familiar and reassuring symbols of love. The silvery wash of moonlight engenders closeness and encourages intimate moments; the night has long provided lovers with a sanctuary-space, the opportunity to find reassuring closeness and express emotions potentially regarded as dangerous or even inappropriate in the hard glare of the sun. The moon gives license to emotions, which is why it appears as a constant in literature about love.
The introduction of the moon as a symbol in “For Love” would seem appropriate given the poem’s goal of defining love. But the moon is introduced in a jagged and broken moment: When the poet acknowledges how elusive love is, he resorts to moon symbolism, perhaps for reassurance, perhaps as some starting point, in the hope that such a conventional symbol might help him in his search for understanding. But for the poet the image can only register as a negative. “If the moon did not…” (Line 13). The three dots are the poet’s. They indicate the poet’s change of mind, a discontent with the direction of the line itself. He cannot bring himself to see the symbol through. The moon has nothing to do with this love. In essence, he stops himself from going conventional. The dots indicate a dead end. The reference to the moon, then, is elliptical, fragmentary, as if the poet thinks of it and then quickly backs away, disturbed that he would even resort to so obvious a symbol.
Dinner
In relationships, lovers sit down to eat; they share meals. The problem for the poet is that such a simple transaction implies (or really makes inevitable) that love itself, in any relationship, becomes a negotiation. For some, relationships are the both the greatest expression of love and its greatest degradation. The poet in "For Love" underscores the symbolism of sustenance by asking, “[c]an I eat what you / give me?” (Lines 21-22). The poet struggles to understand how the more in love you are, the more love appears doomed to collapse into irony. Love demands a relationship; but a relationship demeans love. If I think, he says, of everything in a relationship as earned then love itself “becomes a reward” (Line 26). The poet wonders if this type of sustenance—rewards, negotiations—should really define love.
For the poet, relationships can too-quickly degrade into performative actions, couples catering to each other with the expectation that such gestures will inevitably lead to intimacy or, worse, to emotional indebtedness. It is not that the poet dismisses relationships—rather, as he searches for some perception of love, at every turn what passes for love seems somehow lacking. He cannot bear to think of the inevitable day-to-day negotiations when lovers find their way to a shared space. The poet struggles to find words for the love he perceives as grand and elusive. The remedy for such despair cannot, he argues, rest solely on a nice meal provided by a lover.
Her Soft Body
John G. Hammond, in his analysis of emotions in Creeley’s poetry, found that “sexual love [for Creeley] is the epitome of human fulfillment” (Hammond, John G. “Solipsism and the Sexual Imagination in Robert Creeley’s Fiction.” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 1 Jan. 1975). Drawing on his identification with the sensuality of the Beats, Creeley acknowledges that sexual intimacy endows love: “What have I made you into” (Line 40), the poet asks warily. He makes note of his lover’s companionship, but he also acknowledges the physical/sexual aspect by noting her crossed legs and her skirt (Line 42), adding that she is the “soft body under / the bones of the bed” (Lines 43-44). The poem, however, does not further interrogate the sexual expression of love.
Rather, the poet assumes the sexual expression of love without detailing it. In earlier analysis, the poet is at a loss to define love through words. Here, with the acknowledgment of the sexual, the poet knows what he seeks: Instead of fantasies or losses, wishes or fears, the poet finds satisfaction in the “soft body” (Line 43), the anathema of language. Indirectly (the poet stays apart from the too-salacious detailing) the poet celebrates their sexual expressions. After all, the poem argues that words fail only in the face of contentment. You leave me wanting nothing, the poet says, you leave me hoping for nothing, you leave me fearing nothing. It is the moment, the transcendentally sexualized now, that love energizes, and as such it bankrupts words.
