Meh. Performative passion at best, as all love poetry is at its core. Real passion cannot be contained in words, let along elegiac couplets. Ovid knew this. He recognized the poems to Cynthia--and Lesbia and Delia and Marathus and the others who we have lost--for what they were: sham attempts to capture true passion. So he played along, perhaps a little too slyly, but also winking at the audience. Give me that man as a poet.
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