Love Is An Art

Project Blog It

"Love is an art you learn degree by degree." I Want a Long Time Daddy – Bea Foote

I'm not quite sure what to do with this week's prompt. I haven't been able to come up with a single unified idea to write about. Instead, I keep coming back to my training in literary analysis. I've deliberately not looked up the entire poem. (BTW, Road Trip Girl selected this week's prompt.) This single line reminds of what I consider to be one of the beautiful things about English (and in truth, likely any language). There's great richness to the language and word choice with multiple and sometimes diverse meanings. And as a person attracted to postmodern theory, I like that richness and multiplicity and like to keep those many possible meanings in play all of the time.

So, what is this love that we learn? Do we learn it bit-by-bit ("degree by degree"), or do we learn it by earning degrees in love ("degree by degree")? And what would it mean to earn a degree in love? Would a degree be an instance of the experience of love? Would multiple degrees in love imply multiple love relationships, or multiple ways of loving? What does it even mean to "learn" love when love is, or at least seems to be, something one feels and experiences?

These are the questions that this one isolated line raises in my mind. And the fact that there are no definite answers to any of these questions makes the line all that more appealing. Perhaps it's time to look at the rest of the poem and put the line in context.

On a side note, the author of this poem, Bea Foote, seems awfully close to Big Foot. Hmmm, Road Trip Girl (AKA Squatch), what's going on here?


Please check the blogs listed on the right for companion pieces to this week's prompt.

Next week's prompt: Burning the candle at both ends.