Poetry Blog #2

I’m unsure of how to interpret “To His Coy Mistress.” It seems to poke fun at romantic poetry, or at least at certain courtship ritual, but I could be misinterpreting a serious love poem. “You, Andrew Marvell” presents a much clearer sketch of death and temporality (the context in which Marvell placed romance). Because I’m unclear on “To His Coy Mistress,” Macleish’s seemingly quite serious responding or at least majorly alluding to a poem I think is probably meant to be ironic or humorous confuses me. Similarly, Strand’s analysis, while relatively straightforward, leaves me to continue to wonder what the title and any further allusion present in Macleish’s poem mean.

I consider “To His Coy Mistress” to likely be intended as humor, irony, or perhaps satire. Phrases like “my vegetable love” and “love at lower rate” seem humorous, while sexual content of the poem, especially “your quaint honour turn to dust/ And into ashes all my lust” also seems less than serious. I doubt that the poem is purely intended as humor—though I’ve no doubt that senses of humor change over time, there doesn’t seem to be that much hilarity in the poem. More likely, then, is that this poem is some sort of humorous commentary or satire. Perhaps the poem seeks to mock romance, or courtship, or romantic poetry.

I much preferred “You, Andrew Marvell.” In it, we travel quickly through the Old World, following dusk as it alights on various cities (and also Africa, which is incomprehensibly represented as a continent and not a city). This portrayal of global nightfall certainly does remind the reader of death, and endings, and temporality, but I agree with Strand’s characterization of the poem’s emotional content as “cool.” And indeed, by selecting a daily/nightly occurrence, dusk, Macleish does not represent ending or death as cataclysmic but rather as inevitable and necessary. Indeed, our narrator can feel the night “always coming on.” This representation gives the poem some value to me, insofar as it contextualizes what might generally be seen to defy contextualization.