I agree there is whimsy in that accolade, Ann. But I also see it as a huge compliment. Your own wee thought was interesting, and certainly a lot more likely than our reviewer’s here.
I like “the fateful tick-tock of the clock” as it is a direct reference to the different conditions under which exams were sat in Dunn’s day, where a battery-run clock on the wall did tick-tock away mercilessly.
You point to a stumble in line 11. I think you mean that the phrasing of “past false emphasis” is rather awkward. It’s interesting that line 10 has ten words – “I loved a woman who dressed as well as you;” – in view of the laddish notion of calling a beautiful woman a ten. And then L11 – “But I can’t give the past false emphasis” – draws attention to the fact that line 10 can be read as “I loved a woman who’d rest as well as you;” if “the past” – i.e. a verb in the past tense – is given “false emphasis”. In the context “rest” might well mean “die”. This new reading has three alternative meanings:
1. I loved a woman who’d die as much as I do you;
2. I loved a woman who’d die in addition to loving you;
3. I loved a woman who’d die as well as you will die;
The line can also be read as: “I loved a woman who’d wrest as well as you;”
There is another verb in the past tense in line 10: “loved”. “False emphasis” of “loved” would be to promote it to the stressed syllable of an iamb instead of the equally-stressed syllable of a spondee or even the unstressed syllable of a trochaic substitution.
One can read “so’s” in the last line as “SOS” and still have a line of IP, albeit one that ends on two anapaests: “And so do you. To say SOS only fair.”
My thoughts so far.
|