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Romances: Poems
In this subtle and candid collection, Lisa Ampleman mixes contemporary elements and historical materials as she speaks back to the literary tradition of courtly love. Instead of bachelor knights bemoaning their allegedly cruel beloveds, Romances emphasizes the voices of female troubadours, along with those of historical figures such as Dante's wife, Petrarch's Laura, and Anne Boleyn. Ampleman also incorporates the work of the Italian Renaissance poet Gaspara Stampa, mentioned in Rilke's Duino Elegies, through a series of adaptations of her verse. Elsewhere, a contemporary sonnet sequence dedicated to Courtney Love shows the 1990s grunge rocker as subject, object, performer, and mother. As her poems reflect on popular romantic ideas about the past, the means by which elegies romanticize the dead, or the conventional romance of a happy marriage, Ampleman addresses a range of romantic entanglements: courtly and commonplace, sentimental and prosaic, toxic and mutual.
- GenresPoetry
94 pages, Paperback
Published February 5, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
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October 25, 2022This is a fun, engaging, highly accessible book exploring all different kinds of romances, from the courtly love affairs featuring in the works of poets like Dante, Petrarch, Sir Thomas Wyatt, and Gaspara Stampa, to the tabloid-infamous 1990s entanglement between rock stars Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love, to the unsung marriages of non-famous modern couples dealing with unglamorous health issues and the shadow of their own mortality. There's a pun-loving, fizzy-soda-pop wit at play here, which is hard not to be charmed by: in the exuberantly rule-bending sonnet sequence titled "Courtly Love (For Courtney Love)," the female musician speaker introduces herself with the words, "I'm a good lay. I sing a good lay," while another poem in the same sequence alludes to "the slings / and arrows of the rabid blogosphere," a representative example of how Ampleman's work seamlessly splices historical erudition and up-to-the-minute pop-culture savviness. Moreover, the metaphors and similes are fresh, pregnant and poignant, as when one poem says this of Courtney Love: "Well versed in crafting and carving the self, / you pose like fish bait dangling on a hook."
Romances is marked throughout by this sage feminine sensibility, this bone-deep understanding of all the ways women past and present have had to "craft and carve the self" for survival and success. Ampleman's incisive analyses are unflinching and pitiless. I expect many readers will wince with recognition when the speaker of one poem diagnoses herself thus: "At heart, I'm an A-minus girl, adept / at masquerade...." Or when the speaker of another poem says this about her callow youth: "[I saw] courtship in any kindness.... I blame Mr. Darcy.... I too was a naive heroine sniffing out / signs, waiting for a declaration." Still, my favorite section was the last one, the one celebrating mature, married love in touching poems like "Stalwart," wherein a wife nervously steadies her husband's ladder when he climbs onto their roof to do a chore ("I ignore // the graceful mosquito skittering / on my arm, finding purchase, digging in"), and "Reading Don Quixote on Our Honeymoon," a poem that marvels at the miracle of monogamy: "Captivity is the greatest evil / that can befall men, the book's man // tells his friend, and here you are, / yoked to me...."
Romances is marked throughout by this sage feminine sensibility, this bone-deep understanding of all the ways women past and present have had to "craft and carve the self" for survival and success. Ampleman's incisive analyses are unflinching and pitiless. I expect many readers will wince with recognition when the speaker of one poem diagnoses herself thus: "At heart, I'm an A-minus girl, adept / at masquerade...." Or when the speaker of another poem says this about her callow youth: "[I saw] courtship in any kindness.... I blame Mr. Darcy.... I too was a naive heroine sniffing out / signs, waiting for a declaration." Still, my favorite section was the last one, the one celebrating mature, married love in touching poems like "Stalwart," wherein a wife nervously steadies her husband's ladder when he climbs onto their roof to do a chore ("I ignore // the graceful mosquito skittering / on my arm, finding purchase, digging in"), and "Reading Don Quixote on Our Honeymoon," a poem that marvels at the miracle of monogamy: "Captivity is the greatest evil / that can befall men, the book's man // tells his friend, and here you are, / yoked to me...."
August 13, 2022
"Unrequited love is like insulation -- toxic / cotton candy hidden beneath gypsum board. / It will keep you warm all winter."
"And whoever wants to see me, suppose / a woman in every semblance the image of death / and martyrdom, wearing billowing black trash bags - / but also a hotel for sturdy, work-a-day faith. / One who cries, torrifies, and sighs, / but can't maker her lover more merciful."
"You're the heretic in my blood, / the bacteria on my spoon, / the heated remnants of my appendix / curdling in my gut. But I despise / you."
"Every poet thinks it's the beloved / who calls forth words, but truly it's terror."
"Just as my ardor for him was extinguished / and I finished the firewall, Love lit a second / inferno, more torrid than the first, for another."
"I loved a man as wrong as rain"
"Well versed in crafting and carving the self, / you pose like fish bait dangling on a hook."
"I transcribe and mimeograph you for the sake / of those who've loved and lost, or sighed / over a sonnet. Or believed in Laura (that / phantom, never flesh). For the women / who never desired in print or song / but were crooning all along into the ears / of carrier pigeons that then flew free."
"And there's the Pontiac, a red fox, / blazing through the trees. / There's his mug-face through the rain / as he walks up, still singing / that classic-rock hymn: forever / yours, faithfully."
"Even / indifference could be love to a devout / believer -- a simple fondness could deepen."
"And whoever wants to see me, suppose / a woman in every semblance the image of death / and martyrdom, wearing billowing black trash bags - / but also a hotel for sturdy, work-a-day faith. / One who cries, torrifies, and sighs, / but can't maker her lover more merciful."
"You're the heretic in my blood, / the bacteria on my spoon, / the heated remnants of my appendix / curdling in my gut. But I despise / you."
"Every poet thinks it's the beloved / who calls forth words, but truly it's terror."
"Just as my ardor for him was extinguished / and I finished the firewall, Love lit a second / inferno, more torrid than the first, for another."
"I loved a man as wrong as rain"
"Well versed in crafting and carving the self, / you pose like fish bait dangling on a hook."
"I transcribe and mimeograph you for the sake / of those who've loved and lost, or sighed / over a sonnet. Or believed in Laura (that / phantom, never flesh). For the women / who never desired in print or song / but were crooning all along into the ears / of carrier pigeons that then flew free."
"And there's the Pontiac, a red fox, / blazing through the trees. / There's his mug-face through the rain / as he walks up, still singing / that classic-rock hymn: forever / yours, faithfully."
"Even / indifference could be love to a devout / believer -- a simple fondness could deepen."
January 8, 2021
Tough times for romance, in the post-lyric, post-romantic mode, but with Lisa Ampleman's Romances comes a gust of revivifying air, as she invokes and inveighs the tenderness of eros and devotion from the courtly love tradition to more radical stylizations, including a 21-poem suite dedicated to Hole chanteuse Courtney Love (e.g. "Sex, Love, Death, Hate"). Equal parts hilarious ("Kant the Nephrologist") and revisionist ("Lady Pygmalion"), the speaker's silken, sure, confident, and utterly contemporary voice takes us on an unforgettable vision quest to that country from whose borne so many travelers return, embittered, to orient us to love's new landscape (and battleground): "watch out for girls with spray tans and four-inch heels." What poet, or reader, hasn't felt the plaintive cry in her epistolary "Dear Lyric Address,": a "mouth going dry/ (tongue a dumb tool)/ from speaking to you/ and speaking to you"? This collection is a resounding answer to our century's collective lover's complaint, and the answer is a wild, sensual, unforgettable yes.
May 14, 2020
Thank you to Edelweiss for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
I completely misunderstood what this book was (about). It is not, as I thought, a contemporary look back to the authors of romance poetry of the Renaissance. It is, in fact, contemporary poetry that brings to present times characters, poems, subjects and authors from the past. This past ranges from the medieval times to the 90s. The premise, mixing history and contemporaneity, is very attractive in itself. Regrettably, I did not feel a connection with any of the poems, they sparked nothing in me. The poetic voice felt detached and repetitive at times; the spirit of the writing evading me completely. This does not reflect on the author's capacity, which I am not questioning, but on my own taste —sadly this is not my cup of tea.
I completely misunderstood what this book was (about). It is not, as I thought, a contemporary look back to the authors of romance poetry of the Renaissance. It is, in fact, contemporary poetry that brings to present times characters, poems, subjects and authors from the past. This past ranges from the medieval times to the 90s. The premise, mixing history and contemporaneity, is very attractive in itself. Regrettably, I did not feel a connection with any of the poems, they sparked nothing in me. The poetic voice felt detached and repetitive at times; the spirit of the writing evading me completely. This does not reflect on the author's capacity, which I am not questioning, but on my own taste —sadly this is not my cup of tea.
November 18, 2025
Truly one of the most delightful sonnet sequences I have read. The puns are perfect. The form informs the content in such interesting ways as the lyric I shifts over the sequence, and the tone is so playful and cheeky. Well worth the read!
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February 3, 2020These poems are clever, intertextual works. They work best when the reader understands what they are in conversation with. There is a guide to this at the end I would recommend.
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