I began working on Intro to Love in the middle of a global pandemic. You know the one. I was a couple months joyfully pregnant with our son and appreciating the moments of calm and quiet—the long wooded walks around the agricultural center near our house, the flexibility to stay up late watching movies with my wife. I was also in the middle of a thick and compelling grief as civil rights protests erupted around the country, and thousands were dying of this strange new sickness, and my grandmother, the only person I’ve ever known whose soul is the same shape as mine, grew tired and died too. I found at that time that writing about love was wholly necessary, and wholly complicated. Love is kindness and delight, yes, and it is also loss and fear—love is a heavy, thorough vulnerability, a guttedness, the heartbreaking beauty of a fawn sleeping in the woods, the terrible knowing that I will not be here to touch my son’s wrinkles when he is a very, very old man. And it is the thing (cliché as of course it is) that makes meaning of being alive.
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It has been such a gift to my soul to work on this project alongside such talented artists and creative visionaries. In the midst of the simultaneous monotony and chaos of the last year and a half, working on Intro to Love gave me a gift I badly needed: the gift of paying attention. I hope some of these poems may come to mean something special to you, to help to remember your body and your breath and your being, to remember the people you most love. Wishing you health and warmth and happy reading.