from Doctor Drink, #1

By J. V. Cunningham 1911–1985

In the thirtieth year of life

I took my heart to be my wife,

And as I turn in bed by night

I have my heart for my delight.

No other heart may mine estrange

For my heart changes as I change,

And it is bound, and I am free,

And with my death it dies with me.

J. V. Cunningham, 1. from “Doctor Drink”; 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 (Ohio University 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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