Can poetry articulate something about love that philosophy cannot? The Form of Love argues that it can. In close readings of seven “metaphysical” poems, the book shows how poets of the early modern period and beyond use poetic form to turn philosophy to other ends, in order not to represent the truth about love but to create a virtual experience of love, in all its guises. The Form of Love shows how verse creates love that can’t exist without poetry’s specific affordances, and how poems can, in their impossibility, prompt love’s radical re-imagining. Like the philosophies on which they draw, metaphysical poems imagine love as an intense form of non-sovereignty, of giving up control. They even imagine love as a liberating bondage—to a friend, a beloved, a saint, a God, or a garden. Yet these poems create strange, striking versions of such love, made in, rather than through, the devices, structures, and forces where love appears. Tracing how poems think, Kuzner argues, requires an intimate form of reading: close—even too close—attention to and thinking with the text. Showing how poetry thinks of love otherwise than other fields, the book reveals how poetry and philosophy can nevertheless enter into a relation that is itself like love.

Analyzes the feelings and problems involved in different types of human love, including familial affection, friendship, passion, and charity.

For 100 days, Traktung Yeshe Dorje, an American born lama in the Nyingma lineage of Vajrayana Buddhism kept a journal of short reflections. Some mornings, the heartbreaking poetry of devotion, or essays in celebration of dawn, light, trees; on others, razor-like distinctions about the nature of the mind, challenges to conventional views of seeing, or seething commentary on the shallowness of contemporary culture. Taken together, but in small considered bites, the entries will provide a rare meal to any sincere practitioner who recognizes direct and authentic spiritual discourse. The unique offering of this book is the deeply personal manner in which insights are presented-using a journal format rather than direct instructions about spiritual topics. An astute reader will glimpse-even “fall into”-the way of perceiving of a tantric spiritual adept. We experience, if only for a moment, how things appear to one whose mind is free from conditioning. Eye to Form challenges the reader to consider familiar topics and scenarios from a new, perhaps radical, perspective. The invitation here is to profound consideration of life’s deeper meanings through the unique intersection of beauty, wisdom and silence. This is not a “practical guide”-it offers no plans for or steps to enlightenment or happiness. In fact, the author has no compunction in undermining such fast-food approaches to the recognition of Buddhahood. Eye to Form, therefore, can be extremely beneficial to those who not looking to be told what to do, but rather are inspired to think deeply, carefully and freshly. Intelligent choices on the spiritual path can be made only as one’s considerations reach beyond ordinary-mind’s conditioning. The challenge for this type of consideration is perhaps more useful than yet another self-help manual. Traktung Yeshe Dorje has been guiding both individuals and community for the last 23 years, drawing his students and friends into the world of spiritual awakening by offering them a window into a different way of considering appearances. He teaches in the U.S. and Europe, and is also president of Wishing Tree Gardens, a non-profit sustainable-agriculture educational program in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

In Love and Narrative Form in Toni Morrison’s Later Novels, Jean Wyatt explores the interaction among ideas of love, narrative innovation, and reader response in Toni Morrison’s seven later novels. Love comes in a new and surprising shape in each of the later novels; for example, Love presents it as the deep friendship between little girls; in Home it acts as a disruptive force producing deep changes in subjectivity; and in Jazz it becomes something one innovates and recreates each moment—like jazz itself. Each novel’s unconventional idea of love requires a new experimental narrative form. Wyatt analyzes the stylistic and structural innovations of each novel, showing how disturbances in narrative chronology, surprise endings, and gaps mirror the dislocated temporality and distorted emotional responses of the novels’ troubled characters and demand that the reader situate the present-day problems of the characters in relation to a traumatic African American past. The narrative surprises and gaps require the reader to become an active participant in making meaning. And the texts’ complex narrative strategies draw out the reader’s convictions about love, about gender, about race—and then prompt the reader to reexamine them, so that reading becomes an active ethical dialogue between text and reader. Wyatt uses psychoanalytic concepts to analyze Morrison’s narrative structures and how they work on readers. Love and Narrative Form devotes a chapter to each of Morrison’s later novels: Beloved, Jazz, Paradise, Love, A Mercy, Home, and God Help the Child.

Marriage should be based on love, right? But does it seem as though you and your spouse are speaking two different languages? #1 New York Times bestselling author Dr. Gary Chapman guides couples in identifying, understanding, and speaking their spouse's primary love language-quality time, words of affirmation, gifts, acts of service, or physical touch. By learning the five love languages, you and your spouse will discover your unique love languages and learn practical steps in truly loving each other. Chapters are categorized by love language for easy reference, and each one ends with simple steps to express a specific language to your spouse and guide your marriage in the right direction. A newly designed love languages assessment will help you understand and strengthen your relationship. You can build a lasting, loving marriage together. Gary Chapman hosts a nationally syndicated daily radio program called A Love Language Minute that can be heard on more than 150 radio stations as well as the weekly syndicated program Building Relationships with Gary Chapman, which can both be heard on fivelovelanguages.com. The Five Love Languages is a consistent New York Times bestseller - with over 5 million copies sold and translated into 38 languages. This book is a sales phenomenon, with each year outselling the prior for 16 years running!

The Four Loves is a 1960 book by C. S. Lewis which explores the nature of love from a Christian and philosophical perspective through thought experiments. The book was based on a set of radio talks from 1958 which had been criticized in the U.S. at the time for their frankness about sex. C.S. Lewis examines storge or empathy love; philia, friendship love; eros, romantic love; and agape, or God love. Excerpt: "GOD is love," says St. John. When I first tried to write this book I thought that his maxim would provide me with a very plain highroad through the whole subject. I thought I should be able to say that human loves deserved to be called loves at all just in so far as they resembled that Love which is God."

When you say "I love you" to someone or something, what do you mean by that? What do you mean when you say "I love you" to your mother? And is it the same love that you and your partner share? Is it the same love you have for your favorite food? Or for your favorite pet? And what about the love for your best friend? Is it the same love you feel about your clothes? Your car? Your city? And if the feeling of love is strong, raging, and flowing, is there a point where it reaches a certain peak and starts to weaken? Or is it constantly nourishing and expanding? Do you love yourself? And what about loving the people around you? Even if you don't know them? Love in my belief, and according to my enjoyable experience, is a large orchestra that contains multiple types of musicians, which each is enjoying and radiating a unique form of love, but all are harmoniously playing a wonderful symphony that connect all of them to the one source of everything. Love is an essential component of the pure and genuine human instinct, that is not contaminated by misconceptions and twisted doctrines (intentionally or unintentionally), or by the separation believes about the nature of the relationship between the tree and the branch, as the branch in itself is not separate or independent from the tree but to the contrary, it is an inherent part of it. Mawlana Jalal al-Din al-Rumi is one of the pioneers of the global love ideology that does not discriminate between human beings in any way, but melts them in one pot of kindness, compassion, and unity, and such wisdoms have echoed in the hearts of love longing souls around the globe, so his wis*dom have reached the 4 corners of the world and his words overflowing with divine love have become a global calling for human unity with the one and only source of LOVE. Some of his famous wisdoms go like this: "Your job is not to search for love, but rather to remove the internal barriers that prevent you from reaching it within you." Just as the lazy darkness dissipates in the presence of a glimmer of light, also the difficulties of the game of life will disappear by simply allowing the light of love to shine through the sides of the soul to replace the thoughts of separation, fear, and hatred for the self and for the other, whatever or whoever it is. Until today, I was able to count 71 forms of love that I lived as a personal experience, and in this book I would like to share them with you in the form of lite short stories, hoping that they might stimulate the same beautiful echo that I touched in my life and still do, for it is in fact seventy one gifts from the beloved, who enlightened my vision and my insight, so I saw, realized and loved all those gifts and their giver, and I still excitingly looking for more. These forms are what I have been able to see and practice until this day, but they are not all forms of love, because as I mentioned to you earlier, every creature is a unique substance worthy of love, and perhaps you and I could practice many other wonderful forms in the future, each according to our desire and the extent of our openness and acceptance of what the game of life offers us. My goal of this book is not to gain the acceptance and approval of everyone, because satisfying all people is an impossible goal, but I am sure that many, and perhaps you, dear reader among them, have refreshed their hearts with some of these wonderful forms of love, and this book is to gather those lovers who share common interests. You might not be interested in all subjects of the book, and that is fine because as I mentioned before, it is my own experience and yours is different for sure, based on your own interests. Allow me now to take you on a journey inside my heart, where these forms inhabit and share the spacious place with their different sizes, shapes, and sweet melodies that generously spread In all sides of my life. Let's go.... ANAS