Thanks for this close and insightful look at the sonnets, their place in the poet’s life, in poetry’s history.
My favorite turn in the poem—“With lying at my heart that beat too fast”—the double meaning of “lying” and the writer’s admission that her own feelings may have outpaced reality “beat too fast”. Well done. Well done.
‘Letter’ can mean: epistle, a written note put in an envelope and posted; but it can mean ‘letter of the alphabet’, the stuff out of which words, like the words in this poem, are made. I’m not sure how seriously to take EBB’s ‘Portuguese’ conceit, but I note that in Portuguese (as in most European languages) these things are different words: the first is ‘carta’, the second ‘letra’. But English plays with the ambiguity: letters are made out of letters, and poems are both made out of letters and, in this case, made out of letters. The poem is clearly about a woman reading letters-as-epistles and reviewing being courted by a man, but it’s also about writing, I think: the eye that is seen and sees, the hand that is touched which is also the hand that writes including writing the poem, the heart that informs the poem.
I confess I read the ending of this poem as suggesting the opposite of how Sally reads it. The "ill-availed" makes me think the poem's speaker did not reply to the man's profession of love, and this obsessive rereading of his letters is her tear-filled imagining of what might have been but wasn't.
I’d always read the ending as the poem is building to an implied erotic consummation: that’s what can’t be repeated publicly, because it’s too private, too intimate, not proper for public consumption.
My tentative sense of the poem can accommodate some of yours, I think, Adam. The lost erotic is included in her regrets for what she did not experience.
This is how I was reading it, but I think the ending does support Jody's reading --- which would recast the poem in a completely different direction, of regret and grief for a lost opportunity at transformative love.
A beautiful poem. Knowing the story of the Browning's love for each other makes this a poignant look into their hearts (whether intended so or not). I especially like the enjambments in lines 5-7.
Thanks for this close and insightful look at the sonnets, their place in the poet’s life, in poetry’s history.
My favorite turn in the poem—“With lying at my heart that beat too fast”—the double meaning of “lying” and the writer’s admission that her own feelings may have outpaced reality “beat too fast”. Well done. Well done.
‘Letter’ can mean: epistle, a written note put in an envelope and posted; but it can mean ‘letter of the alphabet’, the stuff out of which words, like the words in this poem, are made. I’m not sure how seriously to take EBB’s ‘Portuguese’ conceit, but I note that in Portuguese (as in most European languages) these things are different words: the first is ‘carta’, the second ‘letra’. But English plays with the ambiguity: letters are made out of letters, and poems are both made out of letters and, in this case, made out of letters. The poem is clearly about a woman reading letters-as-epistles and reviewing being courted by a man, but it’s also about writing, I think: the eye that is seen and sees, the hand that is touched which is also the hand that writes including writing the poem, the heart that informs the poem.
I confess I read the ending of this poem as suggesting the opposite of how Sally reads it. The "ill-availed" makes me think the poem's speaker did not reply to the man's profession of love, and this obsessive rereading of his letters is her tear-filled imagining of what might have been but wasn't.
I’d always read the ending as the poem is building to an implied erotic consummation: that’s what can’t be repeated publicly, because it’s too private, too intimate, not proper for public consumption.
My tentative sense of the poem can accommodate some of yours, I think, Adam. The lost erotic is included in her regrets for what she did not experience.
This is how I was reading it, but I think the ending does support Jody's reading --- which would recast the poem in a completely different direction, of regret and grief for a lost opportunity at transformative love.
A beautiful poem. Knowing the story of the Browning's love for each other makes this a poignant look into their hearts (whether intended so or not). I especially like the enjambments in lines 5-7.
"While the poet casts about for another a-rhyme, some more subterranean area of the brain goes and spills its secrets"--exactly right!