Invisible Strings - 4. "Love's Cure" by Bianca Stone

 "Love's Cure" by Bianca Stone

I realize that it's still early days of this project, but so far, there's been no process that's revealed itself. With the first poem, I immediately linked the poem with an album. In the second and third, it was more scattered. With this, the fourth, it's back to album recognition for me, and this one seems like a Lover poem.

I worked my way through several songs on the album and a few stood out. "Daylight" came to mind because of the sun and rays imagery in the poem. The narrator in the poem says that love "fills my head like a weird gold crayon," and in the song, "I once believed love would burning red / but it's golden." I honestly think that this could be the match, but there's just a gut feeling that another option is better.

Along the lines of the sun/light imagery, I gave "Afterglow" a listen. The narrator in the song is taking blame, "Hey, it's all me / just don't go," and it feels like they are working on a convincing apology. The poem seems more like an observation than an apology or conversation with someone.

I settled on "Lover" as the match. Perhaps I'm being too literal, but I'm searching for any parallels using any small crumbs that might lead the way. A line late in the poem, "Strung lights up, far into the new year," is reminiscent of the first line of the song, "We can leave the Christmas lights up til January." In both the song and the poem, the word "lover" is used. 

Admittedly, I know little of Greek and Roman poets and philosophers, so the portion of the poem on Lucretius is sailing over my head. I did some very brief research and found that in his poem, the universe is guided by chance and not divine intervention. This seems like it could be a large clue, but I have yet to link it up with any of Ms. Swift's lyrics. Further, it appears the poem opens with an address to Venus urging her to pacify her lover to spare Rome from strife. Well, there's an appearance of "lover" again, anyway. I've mulled over the following line in the poem: "Of the erotic, forget what you know. For love leaps along it, the unremembered part of the dream." I think it may be in answer to the song being titled "Lover," but nothing (other than a line about "dirty jokes") in the song actually refers to any sort of physical encounters or eroticism. 

This poem was a challenge for me when I read it through the first time before deciding I was going to do this project. I'm really glad that I've spent more time with it, because I really like it. I normally find myself drawn to works that illicit an instantaneous emotional response, and this one didn't. But the more I read, each line seems to have a solidity to it that I can really appreciate. It's more of an observation than an instant, emotional response, and maybe it's just that I'm getting older, but I think that's really beautiful, too.