[Julie Steiner]

Personally, I can't see this as a roman de clé, with Chaos corresponding to a real-world, flesh-and-blood beloved. I see it far more abstractly.

I see Chaos as the general topic of love, about which many, if not most, poets write in an attempt to gain some sort of intellectual control of it.

Of course that effort to impose a sonnet's order on passion can never be completely successful--as illustrated by the fact that this poem, which began with the poet's bold claim that she would put Chaos into fourteen orderly lines, is only thirteen lines long.

And the poet's failure to do what she had set out to do structurally underscores her failure to do what she had set out to do thematically, too. Even if lovers could, by means of poems, force their beloveds to become something they aren't--in this case, forcing Chaos to become good and obedient and biddable, against his will--then love itself would cease to be what it really is, and would instead become a form of violence against their beloveds' true selves.

[Edited to say: In the next point, Allen made a joke while pointing out the fact that I miscounted. Then, being a kind soul, worried that he'd offended me by doing so, and edited his comment in Post #12. For the record, I appreciated the correction, and was amused by the way in which Allen delivered it. No worries, friend.]