You read the poem beautifully, Robert.

Seems like the curse is naming: the naming of poetry (and its laboriousness) leads to the naming of beauty (and its), which leads to the naming--almost incidental--of love. And what is love's labor? High courtesy? Sighs and quotes? The poem never says, only that those labors, apparently, have not in this case been enough.

As much as anything else, the structure of this poem--namely the shapes of the stanzas--has always pleased and intrigued me. The longish opening stanza (or two) with its truncated, strutted, final line eases us toward the poem's issue; the second stanza, with its similarly strutted opening line, brings a further and deepening complication. (I love that the line is a line that is both one and two.) The final three stanzas interconnect with rhymes across the stanza breaks. And yet it's all couplets. I've always had the sense (even if I've never had a way to articulate it) that the poem's structure, and even those interconnecting (and disconnected) rhymes, has something to do with its three characters--their own interconnectedness and disconnection.

It has always seemed to me that the saying itself--unpremeditated, innocent, even--proceeds to and ultimately reveals not only the complicated nature of the world, but of love, beauty, and poetry. And even the strange, compelling danger of talking about them.

Seems to me, though, that one central fact about this poem is the reminder that, at least once "art" has entered (stage left, I think), there IS no longer any innocence, and nothing is unpremeditated. For the menage a trois the poem depicts, something has gone badly awry, and that something is the sum of human character.

Thank you, WrigleyR.

As a kind of emotional co-ordinate to what you two say here, I'll recommend the posts by Jill McDonough and LauraHaynes at the end of the topic begun by Mark Turpin, at <link>