My Love Sent Me a List

“My Love Sent Me a List” reads like an homage to Shakespeare’s numerous love sonnets written in 1604. Shakespearean sonnets are 14 lines in length, written in iambic pentameter, and have a set rhyme scheme. Typically, Shakespeare’s love sonnets were written for an unnamed love interest, and many of them focus on the love interest’s physical beauty.

Davis’s poem reads as an homage because it utilizes Shakespeare’s format but inverts it for her own purposes. Davis has even said she wrote the poem after reading “thirty or so Shakespearean sonnets in a row” ("My Love Sent Me a List."). An homage is a writer’s attempt to write within another writer’s style to show appreciation for that writer. To fully understand the scope of Davis’s poem, it’s helpful to have some familiarity with Shakespeare’s sonnet format.

The poem also works as an anti-love sonnet. The speaker specifies this right away, saying her “Love” “Did not compare me to a summer’s day / Wrote not the beauty of mine eyes” (Line 2-3). In Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 18,” the poet begins by asking, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” (Shakespeare, William. “Sonnet 18: Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?”) and in “Sonnet 130,” Shakespeare writes, “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun” (Shakespeare, William. “Sonnet 130: My Mistress’ Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun.”) This sonnet, while not necessarily complimenting his mistress, presents an honest portrayal of the subject and ultimately ends with a compliment of love. Davis’s poem does not make such a turn. Instead, the list sent by the “Love” is entirely degrading, and the speaker concludes not with a revelation of love for the sender of the list but with a realization of self-love and appreciation. Additionally, Davis’s poem utilizes many formal elements of the Shakespearean sonnet, all of which are discussed later in this guide.

The poem reveals neither the speaker’s name nor their gender. Readers can infer that Davis, a confessional poet who writes deeply personal verse, is the speaker, though it’s just as important to remember that the poet and speaker aren’t always one and the same when it comes to poetry. The identity of the “Love” is also mysterious, though the speaker identifies him as male. The poem capitalizes the word “Love” with its first and only use in the first line, and the speaker identifies the male as “my Love,” not the former love or ex-lover or any other name that might imply a breakup. There are several possible explanations for this. It is possible that the poem capitalizes love because the speaker is identifying “Love” as the lover’s name. It is also possible that Davis begins the poem by mimicking the style of Shakespeare’s day, when nouns were capitalized. This makes sense when considering the poem opens with the expression “O,” an archaic expression Shakespeare utilized often in his plays and poetry. Some of the syntax in the poem supports this interpretation. Lines like “Wrote not the beauty of mine eyes” (Line 3) and “And yet these mores undid but his own plea(s)(e)” (Line 13) read more like Shakespearean lines than contemporary writing. These lines compete with more contemporary lines, such as the lines of the list that are full of parenthetical interjections. The combination of archaic syntax and contemporary syntax is one good example of how Davis inverts Shakespeare’s style (visit the Contextual Analysis section for a more detailed explanation of this inversion).

The tone of the poem has a lot to do with the theme. The poem begins with a very matter-of-fact tone, which is odd considering the content of the list. There are hints of sarcasm in the opening lines as well, such as when the list is described as “lusty” (Line 1). Despite the list’s tone, the speaker isn’t offended or hurt by it. Instead, the speaker approaches the list in a descriptive way, almost like how a police report might present disturbing information in as objective, boring, and emotionless a way as possible. The use of the words “catalogued” (Line 4) and “comprehensive” (Line 5) add to this quasi-objective tone. This approach might appear off-putting for a poem, but the end of the poem exposes why the speaker apparently feels no sadness or anger about the list: The poem ends with the realization that the list says more about the sender than the receiver. It shows how insecure the “Love” really is, undermining his intention to hurt the speaker by sending the letter in the first place.

When considering the tone of the poem, the speaker’s parenthetical interjections inserted throughout the poem also provide clues. These interjections are mostly sarcastic. Sarcasm has many uses, but in this poem, the sarcasm shows that the speaker has power over the “Love.” This is because the speaker is the one presenting the list the way she wants. She ultimately has the final editorial say over the content of the list. She exercises this strongest in the line “social / (In many ways!) and (ditto!) sexual” (Lines 11-12). The suggestion here is that the “Love” was unfaithful in the relationship, and his boasts are actually digs at himself instead of insults of the speaker. The speaker utilizes sarcasm again in the penultimate line of the poem, where the speaker describes the list as “plea(s)(e)” (Line 13). The use of the word “plea” is significant enough, as it suggests desperation and/or a legal claim of innocence or guilt (remember: Davis is a lawyer). But the parenthetical insertion of (s) and (e) add a bit more mockery to the “Love’s” attempt at self-validation. Earlier in the poem, the speaker describes the list as “the way(s) / In which he was better than me” (Lines 5-6). The speaker changes the singular “way” to the plural “ways,” making the point that the writer of the list is too unaware of himself to even realize the rambling nature of his list. By repeating this move from singular to plural at the end of the poem, the speaker again highlights the desperate nature of the list. And by adding (e) to the end of the word, she turns the legal interpretation of “plea” into, again, a desperate attempt to convince himself of something. The word is now “please,” suggesting begging and groveling.

The end of the poem also introduces an allusion to Shakespeare’s play Othello, but the implications of that allusion will be covered later in this guide.