Like some other extended works (the “Advent” series from Charlottesville, the “Postcard Sonnets” from San Francisco) this was originally conceived a something longer than it became. I believe I originally planned a book-length series of lyric poems—the prose sections came along somewhat later in the process. For what it’s worth, I do recall my readers liking the mixed format at the time the poem was being composed.
Like a number of the poems I wrote in Charlottesville, this is definitely “literary,” though it also came from some genuine emotion. In terms of it being “literary,” well geez, I was in a graduate English program! (This was written while I was in the PhD program, after taking the MFA.) As I re-typed the poem recently, its flaws were apparent. Still, I recall some people liking the poem quite well at the time it was written. While I’ve refrained from revising during the process of posting my poems, I actually did make some revisions to this, though only ones that struck me as obvious.
LoveMakingBook was published in the magazine Little Friend, Little Friend in 1989. I’m always grateful for publications, though I didn’t seek them very diligently in my days of poeticizing. I’m especially grateful for this one, however, because until I recently retyped the poem, my contributor’s copy of Little Friend, Little Friend was the only copy of the finished poem I had (as I mentioned, the current version differs a bit from the published version).
A few notes: “True Thomas” refers to Thomas the Rhymer, a 13th century Scottish poet who was reportedly carried away by the Queen of Elfland. The story is told in Child Ballad 37. The Lorenzo allusion in the final lyric is a bit obscure, too. It refers to Lorenzo’s speech in Act V of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice:
How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!
Here we will sit, & let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears. Soft stillness & the night
Become the touches of sweet harmony.
Sit, Jessica. Look how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patens of bright gold.
There’s not the smallest orb which thou behold’st
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still quiring to the young-ey’d cherubins;
Such harmony is in immortal souls,
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.
This may be a fairly obscure reference on which to end the poem, but that’s how it does end—so be it. I also am sure I had in mind Lorenzo & Jessica discussing legendary lovers such as Troilus & Cressida & Pyramus & Thisbe at the beginning of this scene.
Miranda & Ferdinand, of course, are the lovers from Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Finally, on the non-literary front: I think it’s clear, but in case it’s not: the woman addressed variously by the narrator as “Annie,” “Face” & “Amiga” is one person.
LoveMakingBook