Valentine

Wendy Cope embraces traditional poetic forms, especially overlooked and underestimated ones. The clover-leaf triolet form employed in “Valentine” dates back hundreds of years, considered a throwback even in the 19th century. These short little songs of two rhymes and eight lines—one of which repeats twice and one three times—rarely addressed any kind of sweeping philosophical or political topics. Love songs, children’s rhymes, nostalgia, and other topics associated with so-called light verse tend to characterize most triolets. Cope’s many triolets test the technical aspects of the form with complex, polysyllabic rhyme, irregular enjambment, and even an extra line in her “Nine-Line Triolet.” Especially in triolets like “Valentine,” Cope uses the reader’s assumption of simplicity within this eight-line miniature to introduce a kind of unreliable narrator, a poetic speaker who exudes charm along with a thread of menace. Depending on the reader, that menace can be interpreted as comical or sinister.

The beloved might be disarmed by the mixed metaphor in the poem’s opening line: “My heart has made its mind up.” The speaker assembles contrary body parts, or anthropomorphizes the heart itself as having a mind separate from the speaker’s.