I write for the girl who responds to her sweetheart,
and the boy in love for the first time.
I want every young man wounded like me by Cupid’s bow
to recognize the symptoms of his fever
and ask himself in amazement “How does this poet know
about me and my personal problems?”
—Ovid, Amores, II.i.5-10 (translated by Guy Lee)
When Lexi reached the end she sobbed, then blogged,
“All hail th’antique quill for Enchanting Thisbe:
My heart it stopped when she whispered, ‘Fool, kiss me!’
Then revelled while she and the Blue Knight snogged.
With them experienced the castle, the quest,
The Underground nightmare where they got lost,
The shipwreck and rescue at such high cost,
Last, Fate’s cruel blow, which eloigned him back West.
This sad book’s like some egregious sea bass
That inhales its poor prey faster than sight;
The romance engulfed me in one fell bite
Whereof wholly in its danger I was.
It metamorphosed things from what they’d seemed;
Composed a new reader who’d been but dreamed.”
By Michael A. Winkelman