Anne Russell Assignment 1

"For God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love." Ludvigson's allusion to Donne's "Canonization" is all too fitting in her poem "Inventing My Parents." In her poem, Ludvigson describes a picturesque night on the town, taking a visit to a "bright cafe" on a night where the air is "warm as a bath." Everything about her description of this evening is lighthearted and beautiful, from her mother's bare arms, "silver under fluorescent lights" to her face, "lit by ideas," and her father's "elaborate lift of the shoulders." The overall feeling is very pleasant. Donne's "Canonization" is lit by a similar lightheartedness. The narrator is beseeching someone who is disapproving of his love affair to simply be quiet and let him love. He says he would rather he "chide [his] palsy, or [his] gout, [his] five gray hairs, or ruined fortune flout" than his love affair, which he is content with continuing. I think the reason Ludvigson included this reference in her poem was because in that moment, their amiable tones intertwined. Despite their talk of the war and its potential effects on them, as well as their disagreement of the American Dream, the two lovers are content to spend the evening together, in their own little world. "Canonization" implies that this love affair will never really work out, but in the narrator's mind, their love is a bond too strong to be broken. Perhaps the two lovers in "Inventing my Parents," have a similar dilemma, but tonight are choosing to put it on the backburner and be in the moment. When they talk of "how this war will change them," maybe the husband will be dragged off to the war and never return. Or maybe their "[disagreement] of the American dream" will intensify their political gap and lead to their eventual divorce. However, that is not what the couple, or the narrator, chooses to focus on. They are too busy "savoring the fragrant night" to get caught up in the uncertain heartache of the future, just as the narrator of "Canonization" is so affixed on the power of love that he chooses not to think of his affair's eventual demise. Without having to include the entire poem, Ludvigson's conveys the entire weight of "Canonization" with the one phrase- "For God's sake, hold your tongue, and let me love" - This is much easier to say than to dwell on than some hazy misfortune. It is this quote that leaves the mother laughing, as opposed to crying, comparable to "summer rain when it begins."