![[encore] 784: Sex Without Love by Sharon Olds - The Slowdown: Poetry & Reflection Daily cover](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimg.apmcdn.org%2Fc3ea6fef250de25c8bc5ba4a6665d60db3320303%2Fsquare%2F197623-20250808-20250815-slowdown-2000.jpg&w=1920&q=75)
Transcript
Expedia (0:00)
Trip Planner by Expedia. You were made to outdo your holiday, your hammocking and your pooling. We were made to help organize the competition. Expedia Made to travel.
Nature's Bounty (0:15)
Your body is brilliant. Nature's Bounty has a bounty of solutions to help you thrive, supporting your systems from your head to your heels. Nature's Bounty High absorption Magnesium Glycinate supports heart, bone, nerve and muscle health, while just one hair growth capsule a day helps grow thicker, fuller hair. Delicious new Nature's Bounty Probiotic Gummies contain prebiotics and postbiotics, supporting gut health, regularity and immune health. Nature's Bounty it's in your nature. Learn more@naturesbounty.com these statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose.
Maggie Smith (0:43)
Treat, cure or prevent any disease Hi, it's Maggie Smith. I'm the new host of the Slowdown, and I'm so looking forward to sharing new episodes with you starting August 18th. In the meantime, we're revisiting some favorites from the archive. And like today's episode from Ada Limone, I'm grateful to share her work with you today.
Ada Limon (1:13)
I'm Ada Limon, and this is the Slowdown. I am a bit of a romantic. When I was at a sleepover at my friend Missy's house in fifth grade, we watched Romancing the Stone and I was so eager to see the two leads fall in love that I was the only one really watching the movie. My friend Missy said, oh, I see. Ada is a romantic. And it's true. Missy was right then and she's right now. I love love. Once before I was married, I made a toast to my husband. We were living in Kentucky and he was probably working. I held up my glass of wine and stared at him somberly and said something about how grateful I was for our life together, for our relationship. And at the end of the toast, we clinked glasses and he arched one eyebrow and said, did we just get married? So yes, I can be a bit over the top in my love of love. Even when I was single, I could romanticize strangers or chance encounters or brief affairs into something they were not. My imagination would form attachments based on ideas or dreams, and each time I'd come back to my body into myself and realize that every email or note or sidelong glance was not always the beginning of a romance. Yet when while it was happening, I think I was somehow different from everyone else. It wasn't just my own romantic tendencies that fascinated me, but it was also those tendencies of others to be driven not by love or desire for love, but instead to be driven only by the body and its desires. This purely physical drive was a wonder to me, something I was often in awe of but could very rarely mimic. Even when I tried, my true self was always somewhere off, swooning. It was impressive, those friends, those crushes, who could bow down to the body and even offer it freely without having to offer their whole heart. Today's poem is from a dear teacher, Sharon Olds. This poem has stuck with me for years. It examines the honest way in which some people are able to be intimate without all the heavy weight of romance. Sex Without Love by Sharon Olds how do they do it, the ones who make love without love? Beautiful as dancers, gliding over each other like ice skaters over the ice, fingers hooked inside each other's bodies, faces red as steak wine, wet as the children at birth whose mothers are going to give them away? How do they come to the come to the come to the God, come to the still waters and not love the one who came there with them, light rising slowly as steam off their joined skin. These are the true religious, the purists, the pros, the ones who will not accept the false Messiah, love the priest instead of the God. They do not mistake their lover for their own pleasure. They are like great runners. They know they are alone with the road surface, the cold, the wind, the fit of their shoes, their overall cardiovascular health just factors like the partner in the bed and not the truth, which is the single body alone in the universe against its own best time. The Slowdown is a production of American Public Media in partnership with the Poetry Foundation. To get a poem delivered to you daily, go to slowdownshow.org and sign up for our newsletter and find us on Instagram slowdownshow.