[Allen Tice]

Here we go again: ape, rape, escape, shape, even jape. Ravish: lavish, (knavish), [savage], [cabbage], {slavish}, /quavish/, McTavish. I like savage cabbage. I also think she wants to lead the reader to believe this is a sonnet about inflating fourteen lines onto an empty page, as I think you do too. She wants to ravish the emptiness of the page, to lavish her attention upon it until it agrees. And she does a good job. And works in the war and peace between the sexes. Not a religious poem, not a religious woman, at least in some of her work. I've always liked the poem. Her "love object" is fourteen lines on 8 1/2 by 11 paper. I'm swayed by the music, but not entirely persuaded.