Choice

By J. V. Cunningham 1911–1985

Allegiance is assigned

Forever when the mind

Chooses and stamps the will.

Thus, I must love you still

Through good and ill.

But though we cannot part

We may retract the heart

And build such privacies

As self-regard agrees

Conduce to ease.

So manners will repair

The ravage of despair

Which generous love invites,

Preferring quiet nights

To vain delights.

J. V. Cunningham, “Choice” from The Exclusions of a Rhyme: Poems and Epigrams. Copyright © 1960 by J. V. Cunningham. Reprinted with the permission of Ohio University Press/Swallow Press, Athens, Ohio.

Source: The Exclusions of a Rhyme: Poems and Epigrams (Alan Swallow Press, 1960)

Biography

J. V. Cunningham, poet, critic, editor, and general man of letters, gained the high regard of his literary colleagues for his concise, witty, epigrammatic poetry. In a 1961 study, The Poetry of J. V. Cunningham, his mentor Yvor Winters called him "the most consistently distinguished poet writing in English today, and one of the finest in the language." About the same time, Thom Gunn wrote in a Yale Review article on The . . .

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