How to Write About Poetry

I yearn to communicate with the spirit of one who loved and died before Cupid was born. I refuse to believe that in that era the man who loved to the highest degree found himself in the basest circumstance of loving a woman who treated him contemptibly as though he were not worthy of her love. However, because Cupid has created a destiny for me and because habit does not sway me from that prescribed destiny, I am forced to love a woman who does not return my love.

I am certain that those who declared Cupid to be a god never intended for his powers to extend to such an extreme. Neither to I believe that in his earliest years of existence that he ever took his power so far. Instead, when he came across two lovers who passion for each other was equal, his job was leniently to join the more forward of the lovers to the more demure. His only purpose was to bless such pairs who completed one another. I cannot truly call my relationship “love” until I love a woman who returns my love.

However, every younger deity desires to magnify his own far-reaching authority to the point that it equals that of Jupiter himself. The jurisdiction of Cupid’s power now includes the passionate rage of lovers’ quarrels, intense sexual craving, the writing of love letters, as well as to bless and approve the love of a man for a woman. Even if we were moved by Cupid’s lording it over us to our own misery so that we might topple this upstart from his godhood, I cannot love any woman who does not love me in return.

As one who would dare to rise up against and deny a god, why do I protests as though I have experienced the most grievous acts of Cupid? It is possible that Cupid might make me give up on love, or he might work a more profound affliction by forcing her to love me. Because she already loves another, I would not want to see her relationship harmed. A love that would cause her to cheat on her lover is far more heinous than the anger I feel at my unrequited love. If the woman I love did love me under such circumstances, then I would be ruining her and her relationship.

[Apparently, the woman who is the object of the speaker’s desire may actually be married.]