This Is My Beloved

This Is My Beloved IS my favorite book of poetry. Walter expresses love so completely. The true depth of love when it is real, honest and free. I absolutely love this book. I feel his words. This book has touched my heart. I've read it a few times and it can still bring tears to my eyes and evoke passion within me. I want to be loved in such a way. So deeply. I highly recommend it....especially to all hopeless romantics.

This book is a sensual look of how a man sees a women when he loves her. I recomend this to all my fiends and feel it is some of the best poetry I have ever read and as a creative writing major I have read quite a few pieces of poetry.

I first came across this work late one night when my father, just in from a very long hard day of work, sat in our dark living room nursing a short glass of scotch while Arthur Prysock's recording of This Is My Beloved spun on the turntable. The captivating words, though not yet understood by my young mind, wove a spell about me as I sat in my pajamas there in the hallway, unwilling to disturb my father in that quiet moment. Years later, when I lost the first love of my life. I asked my father about the record. He strode over to his cabinet - the one with all of his 'priceless' records - and put the tattered record jacket into my hands. As he handed the record to me, he rested his other hand on my shoulder and said, "Son, if you must love, love like this". Those words, especially from a man that didn't usually have much to say, touched me deeply. The sheer poetic power of Benton's words and majesty of his unique phrases also has touched me deeply over the years. It eventually led to a lifelong love of literature and a degree in English Literature. As with other masterpieces that speak to the soul, I discover a new gem with each reading. Throughout my life and loves, I've never been without a copy. It's the quintessential definition of love's pain and the bittersweet memories it leaves, like the tang of a lemon on your tongue. ..and as for the music, the recording by Prysock is now in my "priceless" cd collection, but I do have another copy, unopened, for when my son loses his first love.

"This is my Beloved," published during WWII, captures the full sense of the emotional and physical aspects of a doomed love, the joy of time together and the despair at the end of the affair. This is continued in the second volume, "No Greater Need," which is out of print. Both should be required reading for those who understand or have experienced such deep committments or who have lost their soulmate. One reviewer noted that "This is my Beloved" was recorded by Lawrence Harvey, and this is true. It was an excellent reading. However, there is a second recording, done by Arthur Prysock. It is a censored verson of Benton's poetry (some of the more descriptive lines left out and some poems merged in the reading) and Prysock does not always read the lines as one would expect, but it's still captures much of Benton's emotion and the musical background adds a lot. It's worth the few bucks for the CD.

Mark Hamilton enscribed a copy on 3 July 1964 To Jeanne, My Beloved, Mark. This birthday was like no other. Reading the words, seeing the images and feeling beloved stopped time. The blush from head to toe as I was younger in years and knowledge than I am now, recurred each time I read this book. It has been on the shelf for years now; periodic readings have not diminished the force of feeling beloved or loving another as Walter portrays. I picked it up 2 December 1997, noticed for the first time such details as printed in 1943, reprinted twenty nine times and, of course, Knopf name which always spelled quality to me. Curious as to whether this book could work its magic, I read August 9 entry about the forgetting in each season, a favorite, and wept. Reading the other journal entries of love found, lost, found and lost ever more, I came here to order another copy or two as the magic continues. I have been learning to write poems by writing them. Walter's poems suggest I have a ways to go before my beloveds over time are as well enshrined.