Review: Sonnets from the Portuguese

Sonnets from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

No time for proper reviews right now, as I'm at the end of my last class of grad school and I have a huge pile of short books I've snuck in since February that I need to rate.

While I don't know Barrett Browning's whole story, I do find what I know to be quite meaningful to me. I appreciated the slow progression of the poems from disbelief to love, with all the confused and delightful nuances in between. Yes, I did find myself loving over-quoted sonnet number 14, and we may even read it at our wedding (nothing's settled). But again, I find the touch of melancholy and the knowledge that it was so successfully overcome particularly apt in our case.

I also, to my surprise, very much liked sonnet 6. It really doesn't hold up under a feminist reading--"I feel I shall stand / henceforward in they shadow"--but the overall point of the poem, that no aspect of her life will be untouched by her lover going forward, is beautifully expressed: "What I do / and what I dream include the, as the wine / must taste of its own grapes." If it weren't for that last religious line, I might go for this one for the wedding. Maybe I will anyway...there's nothing to say we can't stop early!

[Dates are a total guess because I totally forget.]
[I almost feel guilty posting this lame review to my feed and forcing people I know to see it.]

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