Notes on “Love Poem to My Ex-Husband” by Virginia LeBaron
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By Will Sheets
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“Love Poem to My Ex-Husband” begins on a note of intimacy, a public setting deftly crafted into a “wren’s nest” of murmured conversations and closely seated couples. It’s an intimacy only deepened by the juxtaposition of the poem’s two couples, the first a conspiratorial pair, whispering, “foreheads touching,” brought closer through the laughter they share at the expense of the second. The genius of the piece is born from the reversal of this intimacy. The “wren’s nest” built by the first couple crumbles when they discover the object of their ridicule is blind, a revelation made all the more devastating by its simplicity: “When they leave we see / that she cannot.” They have not figured out their lives as completely as they thought. This is a poem dedicated to the speaker’s ex-husband, after all. The intimacy they once possessed has left them, relocated itself to the simple touch of a loving hand on the blind woman’s back. The poem’s final stanza is a hurricane of clauses practically falling down the page, an unspooling of guilt and shame that mirrors the radical collapse of the speaker’s intimate world and of “all the things / we thought to know.” ​​​​
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Notes on “Love Poem to My Ex-Husband” by Virginia LeBaron
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In “Love Letter to My Ex-Husband,” Virginia LeBaron serves up a scenario familiar to young lovers cocooned in the self-smugness of their togetherness. Yet midway through the poem, a plot twist of portending doom, and through powerful imagery, we watch as the lovers must, aptly, eat their words. But words aren’t the only things they’ll be forced to re-examine, and the piece offers a sharp glimpse into the shame, devastation, and humility that comes with the dissolution of a marriage. I love the way the last stanza conveys this emotional weight through a sort of domestic calamity that grows progressively louder until falling into silence. This surprising narrative poem asks us to confront our assumptions about the things we see around us, and in particular, the relationships we hold most dear.
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