The poet’s use of language can be very effective, as in “I am Yours, a Soulful Avowal”: “I am bound to you, / not by vow, nor by will, nor by law, / but by divine grace.” The anapests in the second quoted line set up a rhythmic feeling of inevitability that helps make the third convincing. Bowen divides the work into four sections: “Flores Caelesti” (“heavenly flowers”), linking human and divine love “Caelo Marique” (“sky and sea”), using images from nature “Amor Insanus” (“crazy love”), offering playful and erotic poems and “Pluit et Lucet” (“It rains and shines”), about the mixed nature (“half vinegar, half honey”) of long relationships.
Some are in free verse, and others employ rhyme or haiku form. May I never forsake Him.” This collection is as eclectic as the subtitle suggests the poems vary a good deal in tone (devotional, witty, and bawdy, by turns), as well as form. However, as debut author Bowen explains in an introductory “Proem,” she extends her definition of love beyond the human to the divine: “all love is entered in its fullness, / and nothing is omitted. This book is dedicated to a pair of newlyweds, and, as such, its poems could be considered to be epithalamiums. These collected poems approach the subject of love in a range of tones and styles.
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