Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

John Frederick Nims’ "Love and Other Wonders" explores the paradoxical nature of love, time, and human experience, weaving together classical music, literary references, and philosophical musings into a meditation on contradiction. The poem, structured in three sections, interrogates the dualities that define existence: good and evil, past and present, passion and fidelity. Through a series of intellectual and musical juxtapositions, Nims suggests that love, like life itself, is made meaningful through struggle and contrast.

The first section opens with a striking observation about music: "You've noticed how the Mozart 'Benedictus' / And Verdi's 'Bevi! Bevi!' sound the same?" This juxtaposition immediately establishes the poem’s central concern with duality. The Benedictus, a sacred choral passage, invokes holiness, while Bevi! Bevi!, a drinking song from La Traviata, revels in earthly pleasure. Nims highlights how these seemingly opposite modes—devotion and hedonism—share a common cadence, blurring the distinction between the sacred and the profane. The rhetorical question, "What do we make of this?" invites the reader into philosophical inquiry, suggesting that such contrasts are fundamental to life itself: "As right needs left, top bottom, / Life feeds on contrariety to exist." This assertion proposes that meaning arises through opposition, that joy and despair, virtue and vice, are interdependent.

The stanza moves toward literary allusion with "I'm with bewildered Viola in this: / 'O Time, thou must untangle this, not I.'” This line from Twelfth Night encapsulates the poem’s existential dilemma. Viola, caught in the web of mistaken identities and unfulfilled longing, places her faith in time’s ability to resolve confusion. Yet Nims immediately counters this hope: "Time has no answer, though we try and try." This realization casts doubt on the idea that life’s contradictions will ever be fully reconciled, setting up the poem’s deeper engagement with time in the second section.

The second section shifts from the philosophical to the cosmic, contrasting time and space: "Time thunders on, all tunnel vision, glassy / Focus set dead ahead. But lazy Space... / Gaping on nests of nothingness we clutter / With urban sprawl and theory of stars." Time is depicted as relentless and linear, while space is diffuse and unstructured. Here, Nims critiques humanity’s attempts to impose meaning on a chaotic universe, whether through scientific theories or physical expansion. The mention of "astral mutter / Like the toy lightning in the Leyden jars" references early experiments in electricity, perhaps suggesting that our grasp of the cosmos remains crude and rudimentary.

But amid these vast abstractions, the poem turns to the heart: "The heart, though, long suspected to have reasons / The reason knows not of, might hint a way." This echoes Pascal’s famous dictum that the heart has its own logic beyond rational understanding. Nims portrays the heart as independent of time’s rigid march: "Has no before or since, under, above. / Out of this world, the heart is. Call it love." Here, love is presented as a force that transcends temporal constraints, existing in a realm beyond past and future. Unlike time and space, which are governed by physical laws, love operates in a dimension of its own, making it the true mystery of human existence.

The third section shifts again, moving from the abstract to the visceral, depicting love as inherently conflictual: "Love thrives on confrontation. Young, it doodles / Valentines, hearts—but arrows soon enough." This abrupt shift from innocence to struggle reflects the poem’s ongoing engagement with contradiction. Love begins as sentimental, symbolized by childhood valentines, but quickly becomes something sharper, more dangerous. The phrase "arrows soon enough" not only references Cupid’s bow but also implies that love inevitably wounds.

The poem deepens this conflict with a stark choice: "Suppose her course ran smooth, all options good, / No death impending—then what price fidelity?" Here, Nims questions the very foundation of commitment. If love were easy, if there were no obstacles or threats, would loyalty hold the same significance? The final lines pose a provocative alternative: "A year for Scarlett, and then one for Melanie, / Iseult one April, Juliet one June." These famous romantic figures—Scarlett O’Hara (Gone with the Wind), Melanie Wilkes (her opposite), Iseult (Tristan and Iseult), and Juliet—represent different kinds of love, from passion to constancy. By suggesting a world where one moves fluidly from love to love, the poem asks: is this freedom, or is it "hell"?

The last, unfinished line—"Souls pupa-size / A-flitting, from lip to lip, through simpering"—suggests an unresolved thought, leaving the reader in a state of suspended reflection. The imagery of "pupa-size" souls implies immaturity, an inability to fully develop within transient relationships. This abrupt ending reinforces the poem’s central tension: the desire for love’s permanence versus its inherently unstable nature.

Throughout "Love and Other Wonders," Nims navigates the complexities of passion, time, and contradiction, employing a sophisticated interplay of literary, musical, and philosophical references. The poem’s form mirrors its content—each section shifts perspective, refusing to settle into a single mode of understanding. In the end, love remains as paradoxical as ever: both transcendent and entangled in the world, both eternal and fleeting, both a force of unity and of discord.

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