Love: Poetry and Philosophy

LOVE , a book of poems, written parallel to my 35 years of practice in psychiatry, is a diverse collection of works ranging from serious poetry, light verse and doggerel, to epigrams, graphics, drawings, photographs, songs and paintings. It ranges from experiences of attraction, affection, passion, tenderness, longing, leaving, seriousness and humor, to raw sexuality, perversion, merger, and raunchiness. The section, Philosophical Inquiry into the Nature of Love, I wrote nearly 50 years ago as a requirement for Honors in Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts. It explores the views of the Jewish existential poet-philosopher, Martin Buber as relates to the I and Thou and his ontological and ethical conception of love. It differentiates two different forms of being, the I-Thou and the I-It, and indicates how “love is the responsibility of an I for a Thou.”