~Sophia's~ Choice

What an interesting and mysterious poem. I don't understsnd it but it is startling. I found these lines especially noteworthy:

If all I ever do is recoil from
this little crime called nature

I risk nothing.

I don't know if you intended it or even realized it, but they seem to echo the famous lines from St Paul's first letter to the Corinthians. From chapter 13:

1 If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.

That "If I... then I" sentence structure is there in both. And I also think thematically they connect. Wow, even the last word "nothing" is the same. I wonder if you intended that.

Hi Virge:

I am vaguely familiar with those lines because you have quoted them but no, it was not intentional. I can see where you are drawing the comparison but I'm not a religious person and have never actually read the letter you are quoting from.

No this poem is about child abuse. Thanks for the quote though. It's lovely!

Very interesting indeed. I thought about someone reflecting on a young love when I read this.

Hi Kevin, thanks for reading. Actually, young love was the last thing I was thinking. It's about child abuse.

I've commented on this in the threads, but I'd thought I'd tell you here again that -

You're incredible. <3

Interesting Sophia that you didn't consciously use the echo. If you had been a poet studied by literature critics, I think the closeness of that elocution would have made them draw a conclusion of a connection. Actually as I re-look at it the slapping of the lashes on the back provide a slant connection the the striking of the gong and the sound of the cymbal from Paul's first sentence there. Oh the mind's of literary critics. (I do have a master's in lit by the way, if you didn't know.)

Thanks Wispy!

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Virge, please pardon my "deer in the headlight" look but, I have no idea what you're talking about. I promise you, I was not thinking about echoes or cymbals or the letter you quoted earlier.


I think there is no worry that my poems will be studied by literary critics in the future but, if by some stroke of luck this poem ever is and they draw those conclusions, they'd be wrong lol.

No, I didn't know you have a Masters in Lit, that's wonderful.

Most of the scholastic critiques etc I read are way over my head. I mostly boil a poem, book, movie or a painting down to...I like it or I don't like it and the why's are usually pretty simple.

I love that you are looking so deep. I think you're just looking in the wrong direction on this one.

I was the owl that startled the swallow
and the fifteen bats zigging, zigging.

The only thing about this poem that jumps out at me as startingly out of place is the repetition of zigging. It seems as though it should be zagging. Then, I have a very strange concept of structure.

Beautiful work, as always.