[Maryann Corbett]

Originally Posted by Roger Slater

I just read Gail's comment and I must say that I hadn't understood that the "you" in L14 was her married lover. Gail is right, of course, but my take was that the speaker was a lonely man and "you" was not a particular person but a generalized luckier person who had managed to find himself a wife while our speaker never did. I do much prefer Gail's reading, so my suggestion would be to prepare the ground a bit more before the final couplet so that dense people like me can be better oriented.

Forgive the digression: This is an interesting problem and one we should talk about later. How does the poet get the reader to make the right assumptions about the sex of the poem's I? Do we all tend to impose our own gender on an I without other cues?

But as I said, that's for later....

[Tim Murphy]

I assumed the narrator was male. I'm sorry Nemo doesn't like it, but that doesn't diminish my respect for it.

[Susan McLean]

I enjoyed it. I like how the ending gives a different perspective on what has gone before, helping to pin down both the gender and the attitude of the main character. Perhaps "tipped" would be a good word to use instead of "upped," less likely to be misunderstood.

Susan