Jim Levy Poet Lyric

Lesbia Discussed Catullus' Poetry

I’m not some filthy ****
who calls your poems 
a joke; I like them. 
But here’s advice, 
take it or ignore it:  
You lard a poem with myths 
that weigh it down; half 
the young no longer know them. 
In the next poem you introduce a talking door. 
Do doors talk in Verona? 
You use diminutives to excess, 
little this and little that, 
perhaps some little thing 
is worrisome to you.  
Virgil wrote of agriculture, 
Lucretius physics, 
you count our kisses – 
a thousand, hundred, hundred thousand kisses kissed, 
too many kisses to account for.
For you breezes are like overdrafts,  
kisses coins, and lost investments 
are like losing love.  
You probably count the napkins after dinner. 
As for metrics, I’m old fashioned, 
prefer the epic beats and elegiac, 
not the polymetrics and the tricky 
new ones you employ. 
You steal from Callimachus 
and from Sappho too. 
Worse of all you mix artifice and feeling.  
It’s time you found a manly voice 
to speak of love and pleasure                                                                                                           as we know it, not from some book.

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