I was speaking with one of the classes about verse forms
and about doing dramatic monologues,
and I thought I would read you one dramatic monologue.
In this one, Anne Donne, the wife of John Donne,
is in bed while her husband is at the window making up a poem.
And she is trying to persuade him
to stop all that foolishness and come to bed with her.
Of course, she addresses him as Jack, as she would.
Ann Donne to her Husband.
Come to bed, Jack, the candle's shed to its waxy skirt,
and I can read your straying wits by the moon.
A brain fly must be buzzing your head.
What is it now?
That new ice sheeting the pond like a scald on hot milk?
The swoon of damn water, like a silent diphthong?
Lucky pond to hold your gaze so long.
My eiderdown is greener than a glade, you gave it me yourself.
High when you dubbed me your newfound land, and swore my
continents your quest.
You'd trade along the shores of my dark timbered eyes, where
unmoved lusheries of life meander, and time
drops sail like a ketch in a lagoon.
Come away from the window, you get ideas like other men
catch cold.
Mid-morning a trifle waylaid you again,
and now your eyes, like twin hyenas,
pick dinner in the slivery light from the moon.
Enough of your lyric flight, enough peeking
under the night's black shirt!
All day you've been sickening with a verse.
For God's sake quit gaming with love,
in poems abstruse, or as physical as if you
were a physical man.
Maybe this one you'll title "Love's Dynasty,"
and begin with a sunset, lying on the horizon like an eel,
twitching its thick brown hide, then
hint at things matrimonial.
And who will guess that tonight, upright as an easel,
you've earth on the brain, not me?
Though I'd tie you in lawless knots if I could,
my heart knows no rhetoric but your name, Jack,
that, like a doomed colonial, sails out
with a seed chest full of hope, and raises so little crop.
How can I compete with a vision?
What holy logic could my wiles defy?
Your muse that's fat and sassy as a cow,
could I stint her even one of her piquancies,
her powwows, her sprees?
What would it cost in hard daily coin
if I shook you loose from this reverie?
I am not love's lawyer, wish I were, but an off put
woman on a night growing bleaker,
and night was never longer, or woman weaker.
I feel bad for the wives of the great British poets.