The Poetry of Mary Robinson: Form and Fame

42 The Poetry of Mary Robinson

Della Crusca’s poem. Her response exclusively figures itself in terms

of the frisson of reading his style and makes his poem seem rather

tame in comparison—again creating a comedy of incongruity in the

bland conventionality of the original poem’s Petrarchan poetics and

the erotic immediacy of the response:

O! seize again thy golden quill,

And with its point my bosom thrill!

With magic touch explore my heart,

And bid the tear of passion start. (10 July 1787)

A remarkably sensual—if not downright carnal—opening indeed,

even if its language is all figure. This quality is markedly characteristic

of these poems: they are sexy, aware of their own eroticism, and highly

conscious of the ways in which that eroticism is created and sustained

entirely through text, through figure, through a shared language of

play. It is breathless and is in fact the shortest poem of their corre-

spondence; it is as though the excitement of the encounter can hardly

be contained. Cowley’s experience as a playwright is visible here with

an opening volley of sparkling erotic repartee—keep in mind Merry’s

poem only addresses Cupid and bears no evidence of expecting an

actual reply from anyone. And “The Pen” itself obviously is phallic

and erotic, as Jerome McGann and Jacqueline Labbe have discussed:

echoing D. H. Lawrence, McGann calls the Della Cruscan exchange

“sex in the head,” although Cowley’s poem points to other parts of

the body as well; Labbe writes of these lines that Anna Matilda “offers

her bosom” and “invites her own penetration” (McGann 82; Labbe,

Romantic 56). While both critics are correct, I would emphasize the

poem’s apparent bawdiness rather than a more cerebral erotic reading.

Anna Matilda is obviously randy, but this rather surprising opening

allows the poem to develop its own dynamic. Comically, the poem

pays no real tribute to the quality of Della Crusca’s verse and merely

certifies it as verse, responding instead to his passion and sensibility.

Indeed, the poem is practically an exhortation to write better poetry.

Responding to the comic Ovidian elements, Cowley creates an even

more explicitly Ovidian tension between Apollo and Cupid in a pleas-

ing metaphor of the poet’s quill having fallen from “Cupid’s burnish’d

wing” as the god drew his arrow, then being snatched by Apollo. Anna

Matilda advises Della Crusca, therefore, to “Be worthy then the sacred

loan!” and he ultimately will be rewarded with love. Cowley knew

what “Della Crusca” meant too. And Merry responded in kind with a

tribute to Anna Matilda as “the Muse!” (31 July 1787).

9780230100251_03_ch01.indd 429780230100251_03_ch01.indd 42 12/31/2010 4:20:13 PM12/31/2010 4:20:13 PM

10.1057/9780230118034 - The Poetry of Mary Robinson, Daniel Robinson

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