February’s not over and so in keeping with the love theme, we move into odes. If you are a detail person (like many poetry readers are), visit http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5784 for a short history and definition of the ode. You’ll probably want to argue with me that an ode is not the same as a love poem and want the facts to back it up. I’ll agree that technically it’s not. But then I'll ask you how you define a love poem. Odes, for me anyway, fit right in. And might be even more interesting because you can write an ode to just about anything. Think about it and you might agree that taking the time to admire and poetically define an object, to write it an ode, feels a little bit like love.
Ode to a Dressmaker's Dummy
by Donald Justice
Papier-mache body; blue-and-black cotton jersey cover.
Metal stand. Instructions included. --Sears, Roebuck Catalogue
O my coy darling, still
You wear for me the scent
Of those long afternoons we spent,
The two of us together,
Safe in the attic from the jealous eyes
Of household spies
And the remote buffooneries of the weather;
So high,
Our sole remaining neighbor was the sky,
Which, often enough, at dusk,
Leaning its cloudy shoulders on the sill,
Used to regard us with a bored and cynical eye.
How like the terrified,
Shy figure of a bride
You stood there then, without your clothes,
Drawn up into
So classic and so strict a pose
Almost, it seemed, our little attic grew
Dark with the first charmed night of the honeymoon.
Or was it only some obscure
Shape of my mother's youth I saw in you,
There where the rude shadows of the afternoon
Crept up your ankles and you stood
Hiding your sex as best you could?--
Prim ghost the evening light shone through.
Found at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15353
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