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“Love is the marrow of friendship, and letters are the elixir of love,” wrote James Howell, a 17th-century Englishman famed for his letter-writing.

I agree, for a lovely letter just arrived from one of my daughters and like all personal letters, it somehow carries more significance and seems less removed than written electronic communications.

Letter writing is becoming fashionable again, especially among 25- to 34-year-olds who grew up with email and the Internet. They purchase 51% of all American stationery products, according to a Unity Marketing survey cited in a recent Chicago Tribune article by Patrick Kampert.

“The fact that people really don’t need paper to communicate these days enhances its appeal,” Unity Marketing president Pam Danzinger is quoted saying, adding “What’s happening is that paper is becoming a luxury … It’s for people who are in the know, who enjoy the finer things.”

Few things are finer than receiving hand-written notes from loved ones, and that’s why I take Valentine’s Day seriously. A clever greeting card can pack an emotional wallop if it includes a well-worded message, however brief, so long as it’s inscribed by hand.

A billion Valentine’s cards will be exchanged this week, according to TheRomantic.com, which cites its sources, your librarian notes with approval. Since 650,000 of them will be given by children aged 6 to 10, most cards will have only a name scrawled inside, however.

Interestingly, over half of all Valentine’s cards are sold the week of the holiday, the largest and most elaborate cards sell best during the 48 hours just before Feb. 14 and only a quarter are humorous.  Men purchase three-fourths of the flowers given on Valentine’s, but women buy the vast majority of Valentine cards, because moms buy most of the cards the kids give.

Nevertheless, romance is in, with old-fashioned, frilly cards being favored this year. Even the stodgiest of dads can raise his stock by adding to those flowers a few affectionate words in his own hand.

The troubadours of old knew the power of words and spent their lives creating poems and songs to express affection. In fact, that’s about all they ever wrote about, so wouldn‘t a book about troubadours be a doubly romantic Valentine‘s gift?  I recently finished reading a wonderfully evocative description of them in W.S. Merwin’s “The Mays of Ventadorn,” one of the National Geographic Directions Series of literary travel books.

Booklist, one of the main book review journals used by librarians, said in a glowing review, “One of the finest senior U.S. poets stunningly evokes in prose the fabled romance and dark beauty of southwestern France … Often the prose sounds like poetry, and few other travel writings could aspire to the miraculously transporting quality of these crystalline sentences … this little book soothes the soul while keeping the senses wide awake.”

Wow. That’s prime Valentine’s fodder, fellers. Even if she doesn’t care for the text, she’ll adore the sentiment.

It took a few pages to get used to Merwin’s cadence and “voice,” but I was swept away once I did, becoming as beguiled by the beautiful writing as by the revelatory details like the trobairitz. According to a thorough article on the subject from Vanderbilt University found at www.vanderbilt.edu/Blaair/Courses/MUSL242/s02/trobar, “trobairitz were the female counterparts of the male troubadours in the 11th and 12th century.”

There weren’t many, not much is known about them, and they composed “almost all their known work between 1170 and 1260.” Only a few dozen of their poems and one song remain, but the best rival the better-known works of the troubadours.

The American essayist Elbert Hubbard claimed that “Great love-letters are written only to great women,” but he lived in the unenlightened 1800s and perhaps never encountered the “tenso,” or poetic debate, between trobairitz Maria de Ventadorn and troubadour Gui D’Ussel exchanging alternate verses about whether a male lover should be his beloved’s servant or equal.

Hubbard certainly never visited  http://www.ilovelibraries.org/loveyourlibrary/whypeoplelovelibraries/index.cfmwebsite and read love letters about libraries written by readers of Women‘s Day magazine last year.

Perhaps I’ll send my beloved library a simple Valentine’s card, for as Walt Whitman noted, “The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity.”