[Matt Q]

Hi Alex,

Like Glenn, I'm reading this a chronicle -- and by extension memories of -- night clubs and youth: "yesterdays nights". Young men falling in love in an instant, then over the years this notion of romantic love and their expectations of it don't play out as anticipated.

In the poem, the N speaks on behalf of all men. So, I guess he's saying: in my generation (and likely, also social-economic class) it was like this.

At first I was thinking of the modern nightclub rather than other kinds of club, because "chorus" had me thinking of music, music with a verse-chorus structure (although, see below, it's not that clear to me what the chorus is of), and silhouette implies a certain kind of lighting like you might find in a nigthclub. That said, the language/diction seems to suggest something older than nightclubs in what I take the modern sense of the word. Maybe some sort of early 20th century club?

So, love starts to blazes through within a second of the N and his peers setting on eyes on a woman, and is in full force within the second it takes to scan the woman's silhouette. During which she becomes more alluring to him.

I'm not sure how to fit "the chorus honed on fecund frame, face, frame" into the sentence. Absent a precedent, the chorus of what? The chorus of love? A Greek chorus? The chorus of a song playing in the background. A song chorus is maybe unlikely, given the time frame -- as he'd only hear a second of it. Still, I guess it could still sharpen during that time. Anyway, I can't quite make sense of this.

Like Glenn, I was thrown by "fete", unsure whether it was functioning a noun (US sense of the noun) or verb or had some use I was unfamiliar with. I think maybe as verb, "just time to ... fete blonde", as in celebrate, honour etc.

Sensewise, I'm wondering what the "or not" is doing in "blonde or not". Does the celebration occur whether or not the object of his love/desire is blonde. Or does the celebration occur only if its object is blonde? He falls in love, and there's additional celebration if the the object of his love is blonde?

In the close, I take "foresight" to be the imagined/projected future happiness of that moment of love's fast first flaring. And this imagining, I think, does not fare well in the face of reality. If that's correct, "foresight" may not be the best choice, as "foresight" tends to imply the ability to make accurate/sensible predictions, and this doesn't seem to be one. Plus "foresight" also tends to imply some sort of consideration/reflection, and that one-second flare of love seems to brief for that. If I'm reading the poem right, it might be more accurate to say that the men described positively lacked foresight.

"Years of twilit blights" has me wondering if the bad things subsequently only happen in the evening. Or that they only happen in the couple's twilight years (or in anticipation of them). Neither of these seem to me likely to be what you intend. Maybe you mean years of evenings/nights follow that are blighted in comparison to the evening/night in the club when love first flared? The nights that follow do not compare to this as he'd imagined they would?

Next the foresight is held in homes beyond yesterday’s nights, and I struggled a little to decode this. The word "foresight" seems even less well fitted here. My best guess is: He holds onto his imagined future, his dream, in a place (the marital home) where it can't be recaptured -- or, his dream is imprisoned (held captive) in such a place.

A couple of general thoughts.

I think the the some of the word choices may be working against the poem, and are maybe trying too hard, making parts of the poem harder to understand than they need to be, but without offering much in return that I can see. Also, unless I'm misunderstanding the setting, which I may well be, I think the slightly archaic feel to the diction is a mismatch for the poem's setting.

I note that women have no agency in this poem. The man falls in love, they marry him. I guess I could take it as implied that many times the love wasn't reciprocated. Still, it's noticeable that they only exist as objects of his desire, and then only parts of them: shape, face, figure and hair colour. Even choices like "the allure" versus "her allure" seem to de-personify. And I suspect that's very much the intention here: These men fell in love, and it didn't really matter to them who the woman was, beyond silhouette and figure, and (possibly?) hair colour, and this approach worked very badly: it inevitably contributed to the how the future failed to live up to these men's expectations.

Thinking on this this though, I notice that it's only really the words "blonde" and "fecund" that makes me read this as about men and their approach to women/love/marriage. (Well, I guess, I am making an assumption in taking the N to be male). I wonder how the poem would work if the gender wasn't specified/implied? People (men and women) fell in love unrealistically and unsurprising it didn't pan out. Of course, you may well want to speak of men only. I'm not suggesting you shouldn't, just throwing out a suggestion.

best,

Matt