Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Anyone for Love? Poems by John Howard Reid
    Anyone for Love? Poems by John Howard Reid
    Anyone for Love? Poems by John Howard Reid
    Ebook196 pages1 hour

    Anyone for Love? Poems by John Howard Reid

    By John Howard Reid

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    "Anyone for Love?" is an anthology of over 100 original poems by John Howard Reid, some of them major prize-winners in literary contests, and most of them published here for the first time. Reid writes: All poets look forward to their first anthology and I was glad that my publisher gave me completely free rein as to what poems to include and what to omit. I decided to settle for the poems that I still enjoyed reading and reciting and to leave out everything that I no longer felt one hundred per cent happy with -- even though some of those verses may have attracted a great deal of critical attention or even won prizes. I did make one mistake, however. I tried to re-write "A Modest Love". This poem had won a Commended award, but I thought it needed further revision. I was wrong. It was an excellent little poem as submitted, but I mitigated its appeal by over-writing. At least I didn't change anything else. I am particularly fond of my tribute to Ub Iwerks, the cartoon king. I love that poem. It didn't win any prizes or Commended awards, but I think it's the finest piece of poetry I ever wrote. The words have a magic all their own. They weave a spell. I can recite the poem over and over, relishing every illusion and allusion, every sublimely linear line. Never heard of Ub Iwerks? But you do know of Walt Disney? Iwerks was Disney's right hand man, right from the very start. Iwerks created Mickey Mouse and a host of other cartoon favorites. Here is the first stanza: For all the shadows that the sparrow throws, a step, a sly swift-winged goodbye, no traces beam, whisper unseen in the lighthouse lantern of memory's eye.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJohn Howard Reid
    Release dateMar 17, 2011
    ISBN9781458090966
    Anyone for Love? Poems by John Howard Reid
    Author

    John Howard Reid

    Author of over 100 full-length books, of which around 60 are currently in print, John Howard Reid is the award-winning, bestselling author of the Merryll Manning series of mystery novels, anthologies of original poetry and short stories, translations from Spanish and Ancient Greek, and especially books of film criticism and movie history. Currently chief judge for three of America's leading literary contests, Reid has also written the textbook, "Write Ways To Win Writing Contests".

    Read more from John Howard Reid

    Related to Anyone for Love? Poems by John Howard Reid

    Related ebooks

    Poetry For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Poetry Rx: This Is the Year

      Jan 3, 2019

      Poetry Rx: This Is the Year
      7 min read

    • Article

      Poetry Rx: You All Have Lied

      May 17, 2018

      Poetry Rx: You All Have Lied
      5 min read

    • Article

      In The Spotlight:your Writing Dark Side

      Dec 7, 2023

      Spooky season evidently offered creative inspiration aplenty for the WM writers, who responded to the call for writing in November’s crime-themed issue on the theme of ‘Dark Side’ with our fullest mailbox yet. The poetry and prose sent in demonstrate

      4 min read

    • Article

      Love Is Our Common Thread

      Mar 14, 2018

      Love Is Our Common Thread
      3 min read

    • Article

      Four Poems

      Jan 1, 2022

      followed—in front, as horses—into daisy& silver dancing, knowing the jaw who unkeysin the danced earth to drink me down to haints,& will go again. was willed. distrusted happiness, addicted to it.a god needs of a god. here, i don’t want to reachfor g

      3 min read

    • Article

      Poetry Rx: No Feeling Is Final

      Mar 29, 2018

      Poetry Rx: No Feeling Is Final
      4 min read

    • Article

      Poetry Rx: Then the Letting Go

      May 23, 2019

      Poetry Rx: Then the Letting Go
      6 min read

    • Article

      AUSTRALOPITHECA1 & STARMAN2

      Sep 1, 2019

      The countdown to you begyns with me, deere Starman, when I wander, dumbly, deep into a space hospittable to Hunger. Now, all’s desert. No milk in syte. Just pitifull sand, what shushes as it slydes through your hande to rejoin itself. I’d join myself

      7 min read

    • Article

      An Interview With Xueyan

      Jun 24, 2023

      An Interview With Xueyan
      5 min read

    • Article

      In The Palace Of Forgetting

      Jan 1, 2023

      In the spring of 2019, poet Matthew Kelsey suffered the loss of his mother. Less than a year later, he would lose his father to COVID-19. The following is a poem-interview between Keith Leonard (questions) and Matthew Kelsey (answers) that began in J

      12 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      Nov 1, 2018

      A poem is a gesture toward home.It makes dark demands I call my own. Memory makes demands darker than my own:My last love drove a burgundy car. My first love drove a burgundy car.He was fast and awful, tall as my father. Steadfast and awful, my tall

      2 min read

    • Article

      Shulammite

      May 1, 2020

      One day I stopped the swipe,left or right. One dayI started to believelike the Shulammite,the ashen haired ancestorthat I am my Beloved’sand his desire is toward me, whether I ask for it or notbecause that’s what faith isbecause that’s what Shulammit

      2 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems

      Sep 1, 2023

      This poem is for everyperson who will neverread it either by choiceor circumstance I writeit in silence wherethe most realparts of our liveslive like a shoe lostin an alley or an emptyboat in a black sea butmore like the fallenleaf on the other sideo

      2 min read

    • Article

      Constructing Love And Truth

      Nov 1, 2020

      ML Your poems make me fall in love with you. The poet you. That’s because I search my whole life for voices that organically resonate in my bones and spirit and I find one, then I fall in love. These poems in Atomizer make me fall in love in a way th

      12 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Anyone for Love? Poems by John Howard Reid

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Anyone for Love? Poems by John Howard Reid - John Howard Reid

      ANYONE FOR LOVE?

      Poems

      by John Howard Reid

      ****

      Published by:

      John Howard Reid at Smashwords

      Copyright (c) 2011 by John Howard Reid

      ****

      All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

      Smashwords Edition Licence Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy.

      ****

      Entire contents including photos copyright (c) 2011 by John Howard Reid

      All rights reserved. Enquiries: johnreid@mail.qango.com

      ****

      Table of Contents

      Descriptive Poems

      Humorous Poems

      Poems of Life and Loss

      Romantic Poems--

      --

      Index of Titles

      Actor Deprived of His Voice

      Albury

      Alone in the Dark

      Always a Good Show at the Rialto

      Another Day, Another Death

      Anyone for Love

      Art Gallery to Quay

      Athlete’s Foot

      Big House, Little Mouse

      Bonkie Bird Is Heard

      Books

      Born Again

      Born Blind

      Broken Memories

      Brushing Against the Famous

      Bus Stop

      Caring Nought

      Casino

      Cinema Sixties

      Clerical Ties

      Concerning the Land of Eternity

      Confidence

      Counting Pennies

      Country Living

      Crossing

      Cure

      Death

      Does a Sparrow Fall?

      Do You Ever Feel?

      Drought

      Dry as a Ghost

      Eli Brucker

      Enemy Time

      Film Freaks

      Fence Falling Down

      Following Ben Sirach

      Gone Fishing

      Good for the Heart

      Grafton in Flood

      Grandma’s Rules

      Grandpa’s Sport

      Happy in His Work

      His Faithful Witness

      Howling Dogs

      Idea Escaped

      I, Judas

      In My Name

      In Sincerity

      Internet Dating Song (Soprano)

      Internet Dating Song (Tenor)

      Jerome K. Jerome—3rd Floor Back

      Legend of Miners’ Flat

      Letter to an Ex-Husband

      Life

      Little Girl Lost

      Local Browser

      Long Vacation

      Lost Books

      Lost Files

      Lost Glasses

      Lost Youth

      Lotus on a Windy Day

      Love

      Love Is a Book

      Making Open Doors

      Manly

      Matinees

      Merrymen Moping Mum

      Midnight Phone

      Mirror City

      Modest Love

      My Heart Is a Song

      Newcastle

      Not Needed on Voyage

      One Speaks for the Nine

      Park Pool

      Political Credo

      Poor Little Rich Girl

      Proverbial Philosopher

      Pull Down Blinds

      Rain Again

      Retired Life

      Romantic Fantasy

      Schooling Blues

      Self-Portrait

      Showman Remembers

      So Close to Home

      Song for Easter Tuesday

      Stay, Rabbit

      Still a Bit of Wilderness Left

      Talk about the Weather

      Tenterfield

      Tide of Roses

      Tinkering Trains

      Training

      Trees

      Trouble with Love

      Twilight Magic

      Ub Iwerks

      Unfashionable

      User Friendly

      Virgin Urger

      Why Don’t They?

      Winter Waves

      Word to the Wise

      *

      ROMANTIC POEMS

      Anyone for Love?

      Whatever happened to Romance?

      You remember Romance—Romance with that Romanesque glance,

      that hungry thirst for tulip-tossed words in time and season,

      those whispered endearments in boundless variations of radiance,

      rhyme, rhythm and reason.

      What unhappy critic would seek to refute

      Love’s hackneyed expressions of enslavement?

      What misogynist would spurn his lover’s argument,

      her surrender to a spell of all that is both clichéd and cute?

      Have your ears echoed those forever seasonal phrases, those great

      repetitive keys to the unlocking of heaven’s gate?

      Those simple, innate

      words: "I love you.

      And only you.

      You alone.

      My own."

      --

      The Trouble with Love

      The trouble with love and the senses

      is a folly of Life’s ambience and defenses.

      We find ourselves skirting an obstacle course—

      impelled by this outmoded yet overwhelming force—

      studded with passions and nirvanas we can never win.

      So let’s side with St Paul who sees Love as a sly, sexual sin,

      outguessing faith, nixing hope, invading charity, rippling our soul.

      Problem is, it’s love that makes us whole.

      Alone in the Dark

      Alone in the dark with Alice Faye

      There’s a youthful dream come true

      a Technicolored wonderment of Hollywood

      allure, a gauze of commandeered carefreeglamour

      the very heart and essence of manufactured incandescence

      You can keep your Betty Grable

      I hate her perky brash assertiveness

      And you can swoon alone

      with your girls next door

      your simpering Barbara Rushes

      and that dimpling Terry Moore

      I want a songbird not a mermaid

      real flesh-and-blood not chrome

      yet unsparing with her make-up

      You can envy me my paramour

      whose heart is soft and loving

      not tinsel-toned, home-grown

      --

      A Modest Love

      Perhaps, when the beached moon is setting,

      and all the stars of that time-tinged sky have muted

      into echoes of last evening’s rain,

      when we sheltered beneath the pasteboard frieze

      of a tubular steel café,

      drinking Beethoven with hot chocolate,

      Mendelssohn with raisin-bread,

      perhaps you missed the anguish in my eyes,

      for I knew we were merely treading time:

      I knew I’d no hope in eternity

      of ever winning your love.

      No intellect mine to wing the cliffs of knowledge,

      or dream in the caverns of thought;

      no riches did I bring, no gifts,

      but a shadow.

      Yet perhaps, if you lie awake,

      listening to the sea-shell salivation of the sea,

      indigestible, minor-irritating, barely imperceptible,

      perhaps, you will hear my voice;

      for one day, skeined in disserviced dreams,

      when desires have downgraded

      desert rims of mindless monotonous moons,

      you may hear the urging of my love.

      --

      My Heart Is a Song

      my heart is a song

      chorusing love

      your tongue is a cruel

      mocking echo

      my heart is a fool

      --

      A Romantic Fantasy

      Please cry out, — scream and shout your love,

      my love, my moody, silent love!

      Command, impel, move me to fright

      your spirit to scale lonesome heights,

      star-silvered kisses, dream delights.

      My ears hardened to whispered snares,

      my mind opaque, game eyes beware, —

      your soothing input unaware, —

      heart indifferent to love’s soft prayers,

      my soul untouched by swaddling care.

      I need:

      Causeway cataracts, screaming tides,

      cascading rapids, engorging slides,

      engulfing surf, impounding seas,

      floods, broken dams, capsized levees.

      You want:

      Romance caressing shadow-ferned lagoons,

      rustling vines under autumn moons,

      breezes marrying lilac eves,

      night gnats dancing on ochrous leaves.

      A winking of haze-enshrouded light,

      with clippy-clop frogs in lazy flight,

      bees mark-timing honeyed feasts, —

      mynahs brawling like placid priests.

      Alas:

      True love is rough, real love is mad,

      all things beautiful gone to the bad.

      No room in love for mossy pools.

      Romance flickers — for eternal fools.

      --

      Love Is a Book

      love is a book

      a hopeful dream

      a tide of delight

      or a

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1