Litany

Classic love poems in the blazon tradition rely on hyperbolic comparison to praise the beloved, providing a list of superlative attributes modified by similes or metaphors that stress the unreal perfection of the poem’s subject. Like blazon’s parodic opposite, counterblazon, Collins’s poem uses metaphors to create distance between subject and comparison, highlighting the ways in which metaphor fails to properly capture the beloved, putting them on a pedestal rather than exploring intimate connection.

Many of the poem’s metaphors use traditional nature imagery, referencing for instance, “the dew on the morning grass” (Line 3), “marsh birds suddenly in flight” (Line 6), or “the field of cornflowers at dusk” (Line 15). These poetic visuals provide only surface emotion, however. A reader would have no way of identifying the speaker’s beloved based on this kind of description. Instead, Collins offers two other sources of deeper connection: either metaphors based on specific personal references, such as the declaration that the beloved is “the pigeon on the general’s head” (Line 13) while the speaker is “the basket of chestnuts on the kitchen table” (Line 24), or the invitation to share humor and experience, illustrated in the slightly varied