In honor of St. Valentine’s Day, I decided to write a note today about perhaps my most memorable February 14 ever.
To do so, I have to go back in time. I grew up in a small town in the Ottawa Valley, situated about 50 kilometers south of Canada’s capital city. My family was well established in Almonte. My father and his many brothers and sisters were born there in a big square stone house where my grandfather had established his medical practice.
Almonte is blessed with water. A river runs through it and the town features two sets of dramatic falls. It has good feng shui. My father would have referred instead to the genus loci, the spirit of the place.
In the late 1960s and 70s, Almonte started to attract a number of artists, draft dodgers, and people seeking a simple country life. They bought farmhouses, stone mills, one-room schoolhouses, and farm properties. They were wood workers, sculptors, teachers, stained glass artists, bakers, and Buddhists.
One of the people attracted to Almonte was also attracted to me. Or I to him. A carpenter, he bought up a rundown house in town and renovated it room by room by himself. I fondly remember a Valentine’s Day when he and I and many other artists crowded into the home of the couple who were living in the former schoolhouse in the country, for an evening of erotic and love poetry. It was grand. The women dressed up in red and black velvet dresses at a time before secondhand was called vintage, when it was born of necessity rather than coolness. (Jean, our hostess, eventually developed a thriving business in vintage clothing). We took turns reading Leonard Cohen, Emily Dickinson, Pablo Neruda, and Walt Whitman. Some guests read their own verse. It was a tradition I have long wanted to revive. Perhaps next year.
What are your favorite love or erotic poems?
*Sylvia Plath, Nick and the Candlestick
