John Frederick Nims' Love Poem: An Analysis

Unpredictable Dear: John Frederick Nims' Complex Take on Love

John Frederick Nims' "Love Poem" illustrates true love in a realistic way, expressing to the reader that there is more to love than what is usually written about in poems. To get this message across, the poem plays with the reader's expectations about what he is going to read. The title sends the reader in one obvious direction, expecting a beautiful sonnet to an unattainable love. The reader envisions the same lofty depiction of a beloved woman he has heard in numerous more traditional poems. Once the first stanza begins, the reader realizes this expectation will not be fulfilled, at least not in the same way he anticipated. As the poem goes on, however, the reader's expectations come to fruition in a much more rich and true form. The reader eventually finds a much more complex illustration of love than he had expected.

Having begun by knowing only the title, "Love Poem", the reader is not expecting what comes in the first stanza. The poem begins with the phrase "my clumsiest dear" (1), which at this point seems to be a blatant backhanded compliment. It reads as a strange combination of admiration and criticism. The phrase suggests that the speaker is talking to a loved one but not a perfect person. The speaker continues his assault on his lover's dexterity with the use of many symbolic images. The reader gets a picture of the lover as having a lethal touch, which causes all glasses to "chip and ring" (2). The stanza goes on to describe her as a "bull in china" (3) and a "bur in linen" (3). These are images that involve recklessness and destruction, not concepts that are typically associated with high praise for a loved one. Because of the images presented at this point, the reader is finding the poem to be something much different from what he had anticipated based on the title, heaping criticism rather than praise on the speaker's lover.