hymne a l'amour

Hai :3

Such a neat poem!! This is so achy and restrained!! I love how this poem feels like it is circling love without being able to speak about it directly. Like, the speaker wants to make something beautiful out of love, but all that comes out is injury, almost-love, and memory that refuses to behave. It has this quiet, bruised elegance to it that I really adore!! I went into it a little unsure because of the title because I thought it would be fully French, haha, but I am glad that I stuck around to read it.

i cannot not sing a hymn to love

LOVE this opening. The double negative is so interesting because it feels like compulsion. The speaker isn’t saying “I can sing a hymn to love,” they’re saying they cannot avoid it. Love is not necessarily joyful here because it’s more inevitable for them. That makes the title-like feeling of “hymn” even sadder because hymns are usually devotional, but this devotion feels painful and maybe unwilling ~~ There's some kind of dissonance for the speaker.

only to razor scars
and tears in the dark

These lines are brutal, wow!! You immediately undercut the sacredness of “hymn” with physical and emotional damage. I love how sparse these lines are, too. There’s no over-explanation. The poem assumes the reader can understand that this kind of love has not left the speaker with music, but maybe with evidence: self-harm, crying, etc. That's a realistic way to show how a relationship can negatively impact you, even when you have the brightest outlook on love/life.

what began as forced proximity
ended with a sob
a thousand never-kisses
and one maybe-we-should-have

!!! “a thousand never-kisses” is SO good.

That phrase carries so much longing!! It gives the relationship a whole ghost-life, like there were all these almost moments that never became real, but still somehow count. I love how “one maybe-we-should-have” feels casual and devastating at the same time ~~ It sounds like something said too late, maybe with a bitter laugh, or with regret lodged in the throat. The hyphenated phrasing makes the emotional state feel like its own object, which is really neat!!

^^^ I wonder if “forced proximity” could be made a little more specific? It’s a strong trope/concept, but the rest of the poem is so emotionally textured that I’d love one tiny detail that belongs only to this speaker. A classroom? A room? A hallway? A rehearsal? A shared silence? Just something to make the beginning as vivid as the aftermath... What's special about their relationship? How can you differentiate it from thousands of other loves?

what tasted like stevia now sits
on the tongue
like rot.

UGH, I love this.

The stevia detail is amazing because it’s sweet, but artificial. That already tells us something about the love before the rot even arrives. It was sweetness, yes, but maybe not the kind that could nourish. Then “on the tongue / like rot” makes memory feel bodily, like the speaker can’t stop tasting what happened. It’s such a good sensory metaphor because regret is often talked about as mental, but here it’s oral, intimate, still lingering.

peu m'importe si tu m'aimes

This line is gorgeous in context!! It feels like a sudden slipping into another emotional register, like English is no longer enough or maybe too exposed. The speaker can't mediate their thoughts, so they must use another language to compensate. The French adds this dramatic, chanson-like ache, especially with Édith Piaf arriving right after. There’s something performative here, but not fake; more like the speaker is reaching for the language of old heartbreak songs because their own heartbreak feels too messy to hold plainly!!

^^^ Tiny thought: if you want the French to sound a bit more natural, “peu m’importe que tu m’aimes” might be smoother than “si tu m’aimes,” depending on what you mean. But honestly, the slight strangeness can also work if the speaker is borrowing the language imperfectly, emotionally rather than academically!!

whenever i think of edith piaf, my
thoughts will riot
and end up
where they always begin.

What an ending!! I love the phrase “thoughts will riot.” It makes memory feel uncontrollable, political almost, like the mind refuses order. And then “end up / where they always begin” is such a devastating close, too, bringing it all full circle again. The speaker tries to move through the poem, through French, through music, through bitterness, but the thoughts come back to the same origin point: this love, this maybe almost-love, remains with them.

Overall, this has so much restraint, which makes the emotion feel even stronger. It feels like a love poem that cannot bear to be a love poem, so it becomes a poem about everything love can ruin instead. I will certainly be thinking about it for a while. Amazing stuff, sophiesangel!! ^_^

- Payton