I Eat Poetry

I love the way it speaks to the dismemberment tradition I've seen all over the place in 16th and 17th century love poetry. Each part of the beloved adored seperately, but they always chose just one outrageous metaphor for each part, and usually didn't go through the whole body, which I find sort of creepy--what eyes and breasts and hands and ankles--but what about the nose and thighs and buttocks and ears and fingernails and eyelids? Hence dismemberment. This poems seems better at acknowledging the complexity and wholeness of the beloved...very neat.

"Dismemberment tradtion" is not, AFAIK, an actual academic term. I just made it up right now.