The Love That Dares

Review

I’ve been eyeballing this at the bookstore for a while, now, and finally I picked it up. I like writing letters. I have a red Mead notebook that I take out sometimes to write letters like this, to get things out. It is a special kind of writing. Unvarnished and yet, when pure, truer than any high-polished thing.

This edition is 221 pages and is a quick read, full of lovely little letters. I appreciate that the editors (R Smith and B Vesey) have by-and-large retained the spelling and grammar of the original authors. They give the letters a real sense of texture. There is a letter here that is so sentimental that the author writes a second line hoping that the reader doesn’t think his writing is faint on purpose, clarifying that he blotted the page too quickly, and so he thus writes, “All my love now and forever.” I adore that. It’s something I’d feel sensitive about, something I’d clarify.

I’m so glad to be reading these and to know the feelings and the tortures and the possibilities, someday, of a deep love between two people. Specifically, queer people. I’m glad this book exists.

There are a few boxed asides throughout, meant to be smaller featurettes, I suppose. Some of these were quite interesting, other times I wish I could trade them for full letters. They sometimes felt a little out of place, though the trivia was nice.

I’m noting some of my favorite passages / quotes below. This is quite a small subset of those that I highlighted.

Notes

p13 - “He has taught me how much I loved thee: truly that man has no knowledge of good or evil who does not experience both.” (St. Anselm)

p53 - “About your speaking voice, it is profoundly true that voices mean more to me than anything almost, and your voice is… you. Well, sometimes when we are apart, I try to hear it and can’t. Anyone else’s, yes, but not yours. … I suppose it’s that sort of thing about your voice; I long too violently to hear it.” (Dame Ethel Mary Smyth)

p85-90, the Radclyffe/John Hall letter is quite beautiful and raw.

John Cage’s letters are a real treat. Don’t spare us the lust, love. > “Starved for a good long fuck with you.” (p137) > “today is beuatiful and I am dreaming of you and enigma” [John’s nickname for Merce’s penis] (pg138) > “…there is apparently a part in the [songbook?] where you would go through a tunnel of love and everyone thinks you would do it very well: so do i, please go through mine, taking your time, if you will.” (TB: ha!; pg 139) > “need you deliciously” on a line by itself, next paragraph: “gas bill came but is nothing; do not worry about it.” (pg 141; TB: I love this. I love the care and the lust in Cage’s letters side by side the mundane stuff)

p161 - “Write me soon baby, I’ll write you big long poem I feel as if you were god that I pray to -” (Allen Ginsberg)

p176 - “I’m still crazy about you even though your corny, greying wrinkling and fart like thunder.” (John Dalby & John Thompson)

p220 - “I know that fear has reached places inside of us that love has yet to catch up to…” (Ivan Nuru, a poem dated November 2021 to his father, it is really quite beautiful).