Love Three: A Study of a Poem by George Herbert - Softcover

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Aaron Kunin is the author of five books of poetry and prose, including, most recently, the collection of poems Cold Genius (Fence, 2014). Character as Form, a book of criticism, is forthcoming from Bloomsbury. He lives in California where he works as a literature professor at Pomona College.

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How would I want to change Herbert's poem?

The first change is that Love would be a woman.

Maybe that isn't a change. The only obstacle is the masculine title "Lord." But I have a pretty good argument for seeing Love as a woman, and this interpretation turns out to be a commonplace of the critical tradition.

Another change is that I might want the difference in status to be more explicit.

In this regard my fantasy is the same as the speaker's.

Many of the restrictions in the poem come from the speaker. They are the fantasy he brings to the scene.

He wants to look at Love. Even more than that he wants a rule that will prohibit looking at Love.

He wants to serve; he wants to kneel. Love forces him to sit at the table like a member of the human race.

He is uncomfortable with his grubby appearance, with the apparent lack of structure in the scene, and with the lack of apparent hierarchy. He might prefer a higher protocol.

At last he is compelled by the force Love uses and by the fact that she is using force.

He can feel more comfortable being grubby if his personal appearance is outside of his control. If his appearance is something she does to him.

The speaker worries about making a mistake, and his worrying only creates new opportunities for mistakes to happen; when inevitably he makes a mistake, he keeps worrying about it. The mistake doesn't necessarily lead to other mistakes but he can't let go of it.

She impatiently takes the worry away from him.

So far I'm finding that I don't want to change anything.

I wouldn't touch the display of rhetorical power. A verbal confrontation in which Love is victorious at every step of the exchange is exactly my thing.

The speaker scores no points at all.

Love is always right and always says it better.

Until finally the speaker can't say anything. There's nothing left to say and his mouth is stopped.

The part about food is less interesting to me.

Would I want to change that? Change to something sexually exciting?

Sweetness might not mean to me what it means to Herbert.