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I was speaking with one of
the classes about verse forms

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and about doing
dramatic monologues,

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and I thought I would read
you one dramatic monologue.

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In this one, Anne Donne,
the wife of John Donne,

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is in bed while her husband is
at the window making up a poem.

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And she is trying
to persuade him

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to stop all that foolishness
and come to bed with her.

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Of course, she addresses
him as Jack, as she would.

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Ann Donne to her Husband.

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Come to bed, Jack, the candle's
shed to its waxy skirt,

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and I can read your
straying wits by the moon.

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A brain fly must be
buzzing your head.

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What is it now?

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That new ice sheeting the
pond like a scald on hot milk?

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The swoon of damn water,
like a silent diphthong?

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Lucky pond to hold
your gaze so long.

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My eiderdown is greener than a
glade, you gave it me yourself.

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High when you dubbed me your
newfound land, and swore my

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continents your quest.

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You'd trade along the shores
of my dark timbered eyes, where

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unmoved lusheries of
life meander, and time

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drops sail like a
ketch in a lagoon.

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Come away from the window,
you get ideas like other men

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catch cold.

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Mid-morning a trifle
waylaid you again,

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and now your eyes,
like twin hyenas,

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pick dinner in the slivery
light from the moon.

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Enough of your lyric
flight, enough peeking

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under the night's black shirt!

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All day you've been
sickening with a verse.

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For God's sake quit
gaming with love,

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in poems abstruse, or
as physical as if you

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were a physical man.

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Maybe this one you'll
title "Love's Dynasty,"

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and begin with a sunset, lying
on the horizon like an eel,

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twitching its thick
brown hide, then

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hint at things matrimonial.

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And who will guess that
tonight, upright as an easel,

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you've earth on
the brain, not me?

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Though I'd tie you in
lawless knots if I could,

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my heart knows no rhetoric
but your name, Jack,

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that, like a doomed
colonial, sails out

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with a seed chest full of hope,
and raises so little crop.

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How can I compete with a vision?

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What holy logic
could my wiles defy?

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Your muse that's fat
and sassy as a cow,

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could I stint her even
one of her piquancies,

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her powwows, her sprees?

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What would it cost
in hard daily coin

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if I shook you loose
from this reverie?

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I am not love's lawyer,
wish I were, but an off put

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woman on a night
growing bleaker,

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and night was never
longer, or woman weaker.

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I feel bad for the wives
of the great British poets.

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