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Love Letter to a Spoon
How fine thou art my silver spoon.
Your neck as graceful as a swan.
Your hips full as the harvest moon.
Thy manner gentle as a fawn.
Bright curls of finespun filigree
Like rays of sun doth frame thy face.
How splendid to my touch are thee,
Desire fulfilled in your embrace.
My lips you kiss, a fervent press.
I swoon above love’s rapt bouquet.
Again, again I bend to your caress
In rhymes sublime of bouillabaisse!
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Leland James is the author of five poetry collections, four children’s books in verse, and a book on creative writing and poetry craft. He has published over three hundred poems worldwide including The Lyric, Rattle, London Magazine, The South Carolina Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, New Millennium Writings, The American Poetry Review, The Haiku Quarterly, The American Cowboy, and The Ekphrastic Review. He was the winner of the Aesthetica Creative Writing Award and has won or received honors in many other competitions, both in the USA and Europe. Find him at www.lelandjamespoet.com & https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/leland-james
A poem that pays homage to a spoon? Who would’ve thought? But happily for the rest of us, Leland, you did think of it. It’s a wonderful piece.
as per Carb Deliseuwe:
Though, of course, as Ms. Latham recently pointed out, suggestions, as to diction, meaning or meter, in the author’s purvey, are naturally embraced or disregarded. Two places in Mr. James’ “Love Letter to a Spoon” could be proffered. As to diction, the word “curls” in L5 could be replaced by the clipped “curves”, and the redundant “again” in L11 could be dropped for meter’s sake.
Still, the poem is nicely interwoven as is, and is superior in many ways to a recent foray into silverware: “The Fork”. Its terse lines, its similes and its metaphors remind me, if not Neoclassical Italian poetry, at least Modernist American precision—not Imagism. Two impressive elements of “Love Letter to a Spoon”, that could be noted, are its aural stanzaic movement and its Dickinsonian anchor.
It’s a cute poem, but if you are going to use the older conjugations of “to do” and “to be,” you need to use them correctly. The second quatrain has two errors.
The form “doth” is singular, and cannot be the verb with “Bright curls.” As for “are thee,” it might be acceptable in Quaker-speech, but here it has to be “art thou.” In any case, If you want to use the older “thou” and “thee” and “thy” forms, why scatter the modern “you” and “your” forms throughout the poem?
Indeed, Joseph, if a poet wants to go archaic on us here, he better do it right. Everyone has heard the song “How Great Thou Art” and so there is no excuse for not recognizing and implementing the correct older conjugation in that instance at least. Any good dictionary will still define many words that are effectively obsolete, probably to help us read Shakespeare better.
Thanks. Glad you enjoyed it.