To Be in Love

Gwendolyn Brooks’s “To Be in Love” expresses what it is like to fall in love with another person and face the anxiety of how to declare that love. To fall in love, the speaker suggests, in the opening image, is “to touch with a lighter hand” (Line 2), which means that they are attempting to hold love without grasping too tightly. They do not wish to crush or harm. This careful respect will enable the speaker to “stretch” (Line 3) within themselves and feel “well” (Line 3). The wording here suggests that love cannot be greedily clutched but needs to be given a certain level of freedom.

Being gentle in this stage gives the speaker insight into how the beloved sees the world: “You look at things / Through his eyes” (Lines 4-5). As often happens with heightened emotion, objects become bright and hyper-real, exhibited by the close attention paid to “A Cardinal is red. / A sky is blue” (Lines 6-7). The matter-of-factness to these statements also shows how love feels like an organic extension of daily living—a natural occurrence. The speaker is sure that the beloved will also experience the same kind of enhancement of their world as well: “Suddenly you know he knows too” (Line 8), they say.