[Glenn Wright]

Hi, Jim—

I like everything about this poem except the title. The title forces a single, limited, very vivid image that then colors the rest of the piece. How about something a bit more coy—something like “My Obsession” or “Word Fetish”—to let the readers form their own impressions? I’m also not sold on the relevance of or necessity for the epigraph.

I especially like the sound cues (rhymes, alliterations, assonances) that are in adjacent lines and keep the flow moving: count/keep/cages, tangle/mangle, pray/pay, adore/whore/more and more, the /s/ alliteration in the last six lines. I wonder if you could find a few more to put together, like “fondle” and “fight.” These irregularly placed connections play against the relentless anaphora of each line beginning with “I” like a drumbeat.

The next-to-last line is reminiscent of Eliot’s “Prufrock,” where he says, “I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each./ I do not think that they will sing to me.” I wonder if this reference would still come through if you emphasized the unfaithfulness of words with the line: “I think they sing just to me.”

Enjoyed it.

Glenn