Valentine’s Day Greeting Cards

Today is Valentine’s Day. How many men will lose their heads over women (and vice versa)? When we write gushy sentiments on Valentine’s cards about our beloved’s power over us, we owe a debt to the 14^th century poet Francesco Petrarch, who wrote 366 love poems to the woman he adored. They were more about his own feelings than Laura, a married woman above him in station. This psychological focus made them the first “modern” love poems and they made Laura immortal, though nobody knows who she was . . . . read more