My Difficult Pleasure

A Poem by Ken Gordon

"[T]he strongest, most authentic motive for deep reading… is the search for a difficult pleasure.”—Harold Bloom 


You are, my love, a difficult pleasure;
it’s inaccurate to say otherwise. 
Life with you is not a life of leisure,
a fate for less-imaginative guys. 
You resist easy interpretation,
and you can overload me with meaning;
then I require a brief vacation:
An hour, let's say, of quarantining.  
You’re my strongest, most authentic motive
for deep reading, Bun, my one constant text: 
Demanding, certainly, and emotive.
You puzzle me now; you’ll puzzle me next 
week, but my feelings are simple and clear—
you, love, are poetry. Sweetly severe.   

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From Family Portrait, Carol Barenberg

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