True Love

“True Love” first appears as a simple poem with a simple story. However, a careful reading exposes its complex social dynamics. It is told by the adult speaker remembering an episode from his childhood and adolescence. As such, it reflects a childlike innocence through the lens of adult experience, producing a collection of snapshot memories. The memories are often described in terms that echo adult observations, which an overhearing child knows are significant but does not understand why. Similarly, readers must take these snapshots and consider them in the contextual layers of the poem to understand what it offers.

The complexity of the poem starts with the title, “True Love.” The concept of “true love” is used in more than one sense. Today, many people use it to mean an enduring love that leads the lovers to forsake all others to commit their lives to each other in marriage. The phrase might also refer to the concept of courtly love practiced in the Middle Ages, in which a man would devote himself to a woman regardless of whether she would ever be his mate. In this arrangement, love was idealized as a spiritual rather than physical union. The title “True Love” might be ironic, undermining either or both of these sensibilities.

The poem opens with an abstract, oxymoronic statement: “In silence the heart raves. It utters words / Meaningless, that never had / A meaning” (Lines 1-3). To “rave” involves making sounds in some fashion, so it cannot be done in “silence”; words are sounds with meaning, so words cannot be “meaningless.” These self-contradictory statements reflect the inexpressibility of love, revealing something of the speaker’s mindset and emotional state in the memory.

Next, the speaker provides the first snapshot memory. He offers a description of himself at the time: “I was ten, skinny, red-headed, // Freckled” (Lines 3-4). Then, the speaker reveals important details about scene and the others in it:

[…] In a big black Buick,

Driven by a big grown boy, with a necktie, she sat

In front of the drugstore, sipping something

Through a straw (Lines 4-7).

The young woman is accompanied by a young man who is older than the speaker (he is a “big grown boy” [Line 5]) and therefore, one presumes, so is the young woman. The two appear to be romantically involved as they are engaged in a standard dating activity of the time: going to the drugstore for a beverage. Additionally, the fact that the young man is driving a car at a time when only the middle or upper classes could afford one indicates that the young man enjoys some amount of economic affluence. All of these factors together reveal that the young speaker carries a torch for someone above his station—certainly in age if not also in class. Consequently, we know at the outset that his love is bound to be unrequited and frustrated.

The speaker then shifts away from the scene to describe the young woman’s effect on the boy:

[…] There is nothing like

Beauty. It stops your heart. It

Thickens your blood. It stops your breath. It

Makes you feel dirty. You need a hot bath (Lines 7-10).

The speaker offers some tangible descriptions—the beating of the heart, the thickening of blood, the stopping of breath—to relate to the intangible experience of being in love.

As the speaker continues to gaze—“I leaned against a telephone pole, and watched” (Line 11)—he expresses both his self-abasement and his elevation of the loved one: “I thought I would die if she saw me. // How could I exist in the same world with that brightness?” (Lines 12-13). The boy does not feel worthy of the notice of the young woman, and he cannot contemplate even living on the same plane of existence with her. Such hyperbole is typical of love poetry, being another attempt at explaining the unexplainable. However, the hyperbole chosen here indicates the boy has idealized the young woman. This idealization continues with the next two lines: “Two years later she smiled at me. She / Named my name. I thought I would wake up dead” (Lines 14-15). First, this statement indicates that after two years the boy still pines after the young woman, suggesting that this is not the fickle, short-lived infatuation typical of someone his age. Second, not only are his fears realized when she notices him, but she even speaks to him. His response is another oxymoron, as he believes he will “wake up dead” (Line 15).

Up to this point, the poem has followed conventional romantic sensibility. Even though the boy experiences the agonies of unrequited love, the love itself is seen as justified, making the poem, overall, affirming. However, it now shifts into a more realist perspective as it returns to the narrative mode. The young woman’s circumstances are far from idealistic; specifically, she is dependent upon undependable men. We are first informed of her brothers: “Her grown brothers walked with the bent-knee / Swagger of horsemen. They were slick-faced. / Told jokes in the barbershop. Did no work” (Lines 16-18). The brothers, with their “Swagger of horsemen” (Line 17) and “slick-faced” (Line 17) appearance assume the airs of the privileged. However, the criticism implicit in these observations indicates that they are not—or no longer thought to be—part of this community’s elite.

The portrait of this family grows even more dreary with the description of the father:

Their father was what is called a drunkard.

Whatever he was he stayed on the third floor

Of the big white farmhouse under the maples for twenty-five years.

He never came down. They brought everything up to him.

I did not know what a mortgage was (Lines 19-23).

Notice that the speaker does not explicitly call the father a “drunkard”; the father is “what is called a drunkard” (Line 19). The implication here is that the boy first heard the word “drunkard” applied to the father before he understood the meaning of the word. The father has an alcohol use disorder and has isolated himself for 25 years, meaning that he is either struggling to provide or unable to provide for the family. The family lives in a “big white farmhouse” (Line 21) with three floors, which indicates that they once enjoyed some measure of affluence. Instead of stating that the property is mortgaged, the speaker says, “I did not know what a mortgage was” (Line 23). The significance here is that if he did not know what a mortgage was, then he would not understand the financial risk of taking on debt without, apparently, any income.

The mother, however, is viewed favorably: “His wife was a good, Christian woman, and prayed” (Line 24). Unfortunately, her redeeming qualities do not seem to do much for the family’s fortunes, which in turn might be viewed as another of the poem’s realistic elements.

The narrative then skips forward to the young woman’s wedding:

When the daughter got married, the old man came down wearing

An old tail coat, the pleated shirt yellowing.

The sons propped him. I saw the wedding. There were

Engraved invitations, it was so fashionable (Lines 25-28).

Traditionally, the father of the bride pays for the wedding, so we might assume that with the family’s financial straits the nuptials will not be very fancy. However, the wedding “was so fashionable,” complete with “[e]ngraved invitations” (Line 28). The boy is despondent, saying, “I thought / I would cry. I lay in bed that night / And wondered if she would cry when something was done to her” (Lines 28-30). The boy here is wondering how the young woman will react to her, presumably, first sexual encounter; that is, if she will cry due to physical or emotional discomfort.

The next stanza continues the realist vein of the narrative:

The mortgage was foreclosed. The last word was whispered.

She never came back. The family

Sort of drifted off. Nobody wears shiny boots like that now (Lines 31-33).

The answer to the question of how the family afforded the wedding is now implied: the mortgage alluded to earlier. However, with no income it cannot be paid off, so the family lost their home and separated. The young woman never returns. The detail about the “shiny boots” (Line 33) is intriguing. Nothing about boots is mentioned before this, but likely they were seen on the brothers who aspired to being “horsemen” (Line 17). The comment then serves as a time marker as the narrative portion of the poem concludes.

If the poem ended here, it would be somber. However, in the last stanza, the speaker says, “But I know she is beautiful forever, and lives / In a beautiful house, far away” (Lines 34-35). This naïve statement (assuming the woman lives happily ever after) abandons the realistic sensibility established by the end of the narrative. The placement of the message in the final line is significant: “She called my name once. I didn’t even know she knew it” (Line 36). The statement alludes to what appears in the narrative in Lines 14-15. This simple act of saying the speaker’s name establishes, or perhaps reveals, some connection between the young woman and the adoring boy. It is a connection that time and distance cannot abolish, for the old speaker still wistfully ponders and cherishes the memory of this woman. While his love was not requited, he nevertheless received a great boon that—in his mind—he does not deserve: He gained the notice of his beloved. The continued significance for the speaker of this simple incident is testament to the power and persistence of love. Perhaps this is the meaning of “true love” indicated by the title.