What is the love poem’s function? Does it eternally preserve the beloved as they are, or does it warp and suffocate them, locking them inside stanzas and lines from which they will never escape? In VENTRIC[L]E, Jerrod E. Bohn dissects the heart’s labyrinthine structure. The organ is an intricate house, full of delight, surprise, and possibility; however, its chambers are also walled, barred. The heart is equally a cage. What began as a series of love poems took a turn with the relationship’s erosion. Are the poems themselves at fault? Did the page become the prison from which the beloved struggled to break free, and when they couldn’t, did it hasten the physical act of leaving? And what remains behind when the beloved is gone? Are they still entrapped even when another comes along? Through meditations dense with sorrow and hope, the sacred and the profane, Bohn explores the love poem’s power to both create and destroy.
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