Close reading 2 Lucia Stacey The Fragility of Intimacy in Shira Dentzs To the New Lover In her poem To the

e New Lover, Shira Dentz evokes the intimate relationship of two women, and their interactions in the isolated world of their spacious loft. Though the poem speaks candidly of sexual interactions, it is the surrounding moments that create the intimacy of the poem, ultimately leaving the reader broken when the fragile world of new love shatters. This poem, unlike most of Dentzs, has a strong narrative backbone, around which the images and moments twist like nerves. The breakdown of the poem is simple and elegant: a new lover had come into the speakers life and the speaker recollects moments together, then the reader learns that the speaker, tired of cutting, burning/chopping, is ridding herself of memories of the lover. A graphic sex scene follows, ending in a disclosure of the new lovers infidelity. Dentz uses both artistic and musical metaphors to allude to the changing nature of the speakers relationship to the new lover. In the fourth stanza, the privacy of the loft is demonstrated by the couples ability to come together as her soprano joins the speakers tenor. As moans, so infused with passion, turn from conventional coital sounds to music, the speaker posits the sexual relationship with the new lover as superior to traditional sexual relationships. The musical metaphor also demonstrates the early relationship of the couple: physically in sync; a harmony ending in melodious satisfaction.

Close reading 2 Lucia Stacey Later, however, in the seventh stanza, Dentz likens the image of their love making to a spectacle Bosch would have painted. Hieronymus Bosch is famous for grotesque paintings featuring half-humans and creatures of hell in settings that are often symbolic of sin or lunacy. This sudden shift in allusions from a perfect harmony to the discordant and jarring evocation of a Bosch painting builds the narrative framework and describes the transmuted character of the relationship. Dentz uses visual allusions to stimulate a visceral reaction in the reader; two people distorted into one amalgam of skin and flesh. Like the relationship, the artistic metaphors have also changed form; from the delicate blend of voices that created a harmony, to the violent blending of bodies that creates a malformed, new entity. The relationships evolution is also described through transition in tone and diction. In the first stanza the most intricate details are described (a rustle whooshes leaves, charms tinkering), establishing the speakers attachment to the memories of the relationship, as she relives the moments through the most minute of details (trees in full bloom / setting the table just for you). In focusing on seemingly insignificant specifics, Dentz elucidates the importance the speaker places on every detail that reminds her of the new lover. The first few stanzas also establish the subtle dependence the speaker has on the new lover. The lover finally fulfills their passion, sets the table, and even physically feeds the speaker. The relationship between speaker and lover can be

Close reading 2 Lucia Stacey likened to the relationship between a mother and baby bird, she perches strawberries and grapes on your teeth,/watches your tongue flip them back. This shows the speakers reliance on the lover, implying that the new lover nurtures her, like a baby bird, who, without a caregiver, would starve. This foreshadows the degree of pain the speaker suffers in the absence of her caregiver, as she starves for attention. To emphasize this shift, Dentz describes their synchrony as their shadows like twins are torn apart like the card in two/from a bouquet/ she sent at the start of the romance, and juxtaposes this to the grotesque images in the ending stanzas and communicates heartbreak quite viscerally to the reader. The sex scene that follows is italicized in order to emphasize the intimacy, almost as though it is being whispered to the reader. The tone diverges dramatically from the previous stanzas. Rather than the erotic language used to describe sex early in the relationship (you teem with each others fluids), the speaker describes the image of herself performing oral sex as a fetus head/disproportionately large. This harkens back to the mother and baby bird description, but perverts the relationship such that the baby is sexualized; emphasizing the mutated form the relationship has taken. The speaker continues to completely dehumanize the lover by describing her womb as headwear. The womb, a most inherently nurturing place, becomes a suffocating spectacle when the speaker enters it.

Close reading 2 Lucia Stacey As Dentz switches back from italics, the speaker pulls away from the moment, describing the recoil in the afterglow as the lover untwines from her. Then, the poem finds its resolution; and the reader is provided with an understanding as to the conflict that has spurred the relationship to end. The lover goes to lie with a new lover, an act painful to the speaker in and of itself but compounded by the lovers demoralizing and supercilious attitude toward the speakers pain, deriding her for being medieval when she does not forgive betrayal.