Dan Gilmore

Love Takes a Bow: New and Collected Poems Dan Gilmore

Love Takes a Bow celebrates love in all its forms - from the first kiss of childhood to the last at death, from the loss of a pet who slept on its back to the loss of a friend who wrote symphonies for automobiles, from the blare of what's permanent in our lives to the transient whispers of love, from failed one night stands to mature and enduring love, from the love of strangers we will never meet to the love of partners we will spend our lives with, from love of flawed parents to the infatuated glow of first love, from wildly erotic love to failed marriage, from innocent love to love in the shadow of death, from love of children and family to love of a crippled saleswoman who sells cantaloupes. Love is Proteus that can take any form to free or enslave us. It is our personal history that imprisons us in its vise grip. It is the key to self-knowledge and the rusted chains and lock of psychosis. It is life. It is death. If we are fully human, we learn to celebrate its calm waters and the daemons that lurk below the surface. We embrace love, seek it out like lost children, and do our best to survive the tides of love that rip us apart, send us gasping for air, and fling us onto love's rocky shores.