Gwendolyn Brooks' poem "To Be In Love" explores the joy and pain of love through three stages: 1) Falling in love makes one see the world through their partner's eyes and experience an inner lightness and well-being. 2) When alone, being separated from their love leaves one feeling empty and with a "ghastly freedom." 3) Revealing one's love publicly would mean its end, like a golden column crashing into ashes. Loving another inevitably brings both rapture and ruin.

1. Gwendolyn Brooks
To Be In Love

2.  To be in love
Is to touch things with a lighter hand.
In yourself you stretch, you are well.
You look at things
Through his eyes.
A cardinal is red.
A sky is blue.
Suddenly you know he knows too.
He is not there but
You know you are tasting together
The winter, or light spring weather.
His hand to take your hand is overmuch.
Too much to bear.
You cannot look in his eyes
Because your pulse must not say
What must not be said.

3.  When he
Shuts a door—
Is not there—
Your arms are water.
And you are free
With a ghastly freedom.
You are the beautiful half
Of a golden hurt.
You remember and covet his mouth,
To touch, to whisper on.
Oh when to declare
Is certain Death!
Oh when to apprize,
Is to mesmerize,
To see fall down, the Column of Gold,
Into the commonest ash.

4. Vocabulary
 Cardinal: Bright red bird
 Apprize: tell, inform
 Mesmerize: hypnotize
 Ghastly: Frightening
 Declare: announce
 Covet: yearn for, long for, want, desire

5. What is the poem about?
 The poem is about the joy and the sadness love
brings.
 As well as what seems to be the inevitable end of
all relationships.
 The reason that the poem is worth reading is that it
uses simple words and concepts to express the
excitement of falling in love and the despair that
one experiences when that love is taken away.
 DO YOU THINK THIS IS AN ACCURATE PORTRAYAL
OF LOVE?

6. If the poem was a story how would it go?
 Boy meets girl…

7. Answer the following questions in your
books
 According to the poet, what happens when you fall in love?
 “You are free / With a ghastly freedom”. Why is the freedom
ghastly?
 “To see fall down, the Column of Gold,/ Into the commonest
ash.”
What figure of speech is used? Explain the meaning of it.
 “In yourself you stretch, you are well.”
Explain the meaning of this metaphor?
 “Oh when to declare/ Is certain Death!”. Why does the narrator
feel this way?