GengtaoYi

//**"Love Poems" by Lon Otto (1978)** // Gengtao YI //

He has written her a St. Valentine's Day love poem. It is very beautiful; it expresses, embodies 1 a passionate, genuine emotion, emotion of a sort he hardly realized himself capable of, tenderness 2 that is like the tenderness of a better man. At the same time, the imagery is hard, diamond clear, the 3 form intricate yet unobtrusive. He says the poem out loud to himself over and over. He cannot believe 4 it, it is so good. It is the best poem he has ever written. 5

He will mail it to her tonight. She will open it as soon as it arrives, cleverly timed, on St. 6 Valentine's Day. She will be floored, she will be blown away by its beauty and passion. She will put it 7 away with his other letters, loving him for it, as she loves him for his other letters. She will not show it 8 to anyone, for she is a private person, which is one of the qualities he loves in her. 9

After he has mailed the poem to her, written out in his interesting hand, he types up a copy for 10 his own files. He decides to send a copy to one of the more prestigious literary magazines, one into 11 which he has not yet been admitted. He hesitates about the dedication, which could lead to 12 embarrassment, among other things, with his wife. In the end he omits the dedication. In the end he 13 decides to give a copy also to his wife. In the end he sends a copy also to a woman he knows in 14 England, a poet who really understands his work. He writes out a copy for her, dedicated to her 15 initials. It will reach her a few days late, she will think of him thinking of her a few days before St. 16 Valentine's Day. 17

note: the numbers after each line is the line number, they are not in the original work.

**__Vertical Thinking__ Way 1** //**:** **First Impressions** The flash fiction is about a writer who has finished writing a poem for his lover for Valentine's Day and is in the process of admiring it. His poem is well written, well and tender enough for him to contemplate sending it to a prestigious literary magazine. However, he ends up not sending the poem to a prestigious literary magazine and instead sends one copy to his wife and one copy to his "lover" a couple of days late. This poem by Lon Otto, shows a man who appears to have issues with his wife and is currently having an affair with her, yet after writing his love poem to his mistress, he sees the tenderness within his poem that hints of a better man. It is through his admiration of his poem that he comes to reflect upon his actions and reconsiders sending his poem to a prestigious magazine and sends to his friend in England, whom I think is his misress, the poem for her critique.


 * Way 2****: Engaging with the Text **  After reading the poem out loud, I didn't find any alliteration, assonance, but I notice that the writer uses some repetition in the first paragraph. Also, after reading the story out loud, the poem seems to have a different meaning. Instead of the poet realizing his fault, he actually never realizes his fault and instead is in fact vain. He writes a beautiful love poem not because it expresses love but because it has a lot of beautiful imagery and words, and in fact I doubt he actually realizes what love is since he ends up sending his poem to many different women all of whom he dedicates his poem to. Last but not least, he sends his poem to a literary magazine without a dedication for his own personal gain, and hence that takes the genuine emotions and intentions away from his poem.

This short story is written in a very concise form, with its high content to filler ratio, hence this work should be considered as a flash fiction. In order to tell a complete story in a mere 302 words, Otto starts off giving each word a useful purpose without any waste and, as expected, many hints are hidden between the lines.
 * Way 3****:** **A Point about Form and Its Relationship to Content**

The story reveals the character of the poet little by little as given by the line, "emotion of a sort he hardly realized himself capable of," (Otto, 2) which indicates the poet's lack of self esteem which contrasts against his poem. In the beginning, the readers start to like the poet. But as the story progresses the readers comes across the line, "the tenderness of a better man," (Otto, 3) and begins to question the character of the poet.

The poet's potential low self-esteem turns into an unrealistic desire to be loved by anyone near him, even at the risk of hurting those he "loves". The reason being that, a love poem is supposed to be personalized, but he feels as if he can give the same poem to several different women and ultimately change the dedication to someone he doesn't even have feelings towards: a woman who "understands his work" (Otto, 15).

This 180 degree shift in the 302 words is intentional. The author portrays a good image of the poet in the beginning and destroys it soon afterwards, and thus reflects how dangerous a human heart, in this case the poets heart, is. Because of the poet's low self esteem, the depression deep inside him bursts and turns him from an angel to a devil. He decides to play the field. He decides to ruin the purity of a love poem, or his love, by sending it to several women. The use of flash fiction let this drastic change flash across readers' mind.


 * Way 3****: Another Point about Form and Its Relationship to Content **

Another indication of the work is that the man is so concentrated in himself that he does not have any feeling for other people. All he wants out of other people is for them to think of him thinking of them and to praise him. He doesn't really think about them. What he actually does is play the cards like a scientist, timing carefully around Valentine's day.

Unlike the lengthy and redundant foreshadowing employed by normal fictions, in Otto's "Love Poems" the man's narcissism is outlined quickly by the simple fact that he mails the letter to several different recipients. This kind of "oversimplification" presents a Narcissist Personality Disorder patient to the readers more directly. One after another recipient he thinks of is introduced continuously, showing how easy it is to decide to send to one more person and hence his illness is then revealed to the readers.


 * Way 4: Unpacking an Instance of Figurative Language**

In the second sentence, Otto employs a simile comparing genuine emotion to something that the poet is not capable of which literally means that real emotion is something that the poet does not possess. According to Merriam Webster, another meaning of "genuine" is sincere and honest as in a deep and genuine love (Merriam Webster). So the connotation of this simile is actually about a sincere love, that the poet does not possess. In regards to the text, though the poem is "passionate", "genuine" and should be dedicated to who he truly loves only, because the poet sends his love poem to several persons he then destroys the sincerity of the poem and hence it being genuine.

**Way 4: Unpacking Another Instance of Figurative Language**

Later Otto describes the poem's imagery is as clear as a "diamond" which is a simile, which literally a diamond means a precious stone. And as everyone knows, a fine diamond is very transparent, just like artificial glass. So what Otto tries to say here is the imagery or the purpose of the poem is very precise, probably the notion of "I love you" is very clear. Combined with other contexts, the poem is also described as genuine. Therefore the poem is "diamond clear" when it is conveying the genuine emotion of love.

**Way 4: Unpacking Another Instance of Figurative Language**

At the beginning of the third paragraph, Otto says the poet's hand is "interesting". In common people's perception, "interesting" is normally used to describe a person or an event, instead of a mere object. So here it is an obvious personification because hand does not have human trait. Through this personification, the hand, however, is acting on behalf of his owner--the protagonist. The hand itself is not interesting at all, the characteristic of interesting is endowed by his owner because it is him, his mindset, that is interesting, that makes a second copy for somebody else. Throughout the fiction, we can see that he himself might think what he is doing is interesting, but we as readers know that he is fooling around with the women and with his own love, which is pathetic.


 * Way 4: Unpacking Another Instance of Figurative Language**

The last figurative language I have spotted is the parataxis starting with "in the end," Otto uses in the last paragraph. Literally "in the end" means "finally". They indicate the things that the man does consequently. If we look into them, the three "in the end" reveals the fast boosting of his craziness. He decides to send to a new person in less and less time. His randomness is out of control. On the surface it seems he is trying to please everyone. However, as we the reader come to understand the poet is trying to satisfy his endless vanity.


 * Way 5: Analyzing the Setting**

One of the settings, although it may not appear as one at first, is the Valentine's day, "He has written her a St. Valentine's Day love poem" (Otto) tells us that the love poem is for the setting of Feb. 14 and all the notions of romance it conjures forth. And this gives the poem a very sacred connotation meaning the poem is more serious than a simple love poem written for other dates. But from the consequent context we know that the protagonist is not serious about this date at all. He not only plays and in "It will reach her a few days late, she will think of him thinking of her a few days before St. Valentine's Day"(Otto), the use of "a few days late" and "a few days before" indicates his abnormal mindset and disrespect to the sacred love and hence not letting any women think of him on Valentine's day. In other words, since he fools around with other people's love, other people's love to him in turn will never escalate to the sacred level.


 * Way 6: Identifying and Analyzing Point of View**

The fiction is written in the third person limited PoV.This PoV iterates the story in an unbiased way. We can see the whole story very clearly but since the PoV is third person limited, some of his actions need to be interpreted in order to thoroughly understand the protagonist's thinking, such as why he sends the letter to multiple persons. Another advantage of this work is that it summarizes or generalizes time very quick. In order to let the readers see how fast he loses control, in the third paragraph, Otto allows the poet to make decision of omitting dedication and sending letters to different persons in three consecutive sentences. The third person limited PoV enables the reader to read and interpret the information that the third person sees which isn't sucepitble to being easily biased like say first person PoV.


 * Way 7: Analyzing Complexity, Ambiguity, & Difficulty**

At the beginning of the story, Otto mentions "a better man", this phrase entails two possible meanings. Firstly, the married man probably is having an affair with a woman. The "tenderness of a better man" might imply that he is realizing this illegal relationship and decides to end this relationship before the Valentine's Day or the fact that he isn't as tender as the man he assuems to be in his poem. It is reasonable because there is a tendency to accept good endings of a story where characters learn morals and change instead of escalating their vices. However this assumption seems garbling as the story progresses. In addition, the introduction of the prestigious magazine is unexplained which reflects flash fiction which is famous for its conciseness. Every sentence, even every word has its designated meanings. Therefore the above explanation is unacceptable. It is more reasonable to think of the protagonist as a man with low esteem being distorted by his own mindset and finally turns into someone that has gone crazy. He then makes himself proud of fooling around with other women's emotions and ultimately denigrating love.The fiction is more of reflecting a mentally distorted individual than reflecting the resipiscence of an individual.


 * Way 8: Considering Canonicity**

For this piece of work, it elegantly delineates the protagonist's thinking deep inside his heart. His guess of how the first woman will react after she got the mail and his plot around the Valentine's day are both described in a subtle way. In this sense, the work possesses aesthetic value. However, since what the protagonist is doing is not very acceptable, its aesthetic value gets points off here. Speaking of the story itself, it is describing some morbid behaviors resulting from a psychological disease. And this problem is not prevailing in the society. So it is not of significant social value. In general, this work should not be considered as a canonical work.

Way 9: Biographical Context
Since the author is not very famous and still alive, biographical information about him is extremely limited. One thing in his biography I noticed is that he graduated from college with summa cum laude. This shows that he was an excellent student in school. According to research, college students are more and more narcissistic (Hamlin). It is then reasonable to deduct that for excellent students, there is a higher rate of narcissism, Otto as a summa cum laude student might have similar thoughts too. Thus his narcissistic thinking might have provoked him to compose such a fiction: I am so good, so I can do whatsoever I want, I do not need to care about ethics and the like if the thing I do is benefiting myself, I am the center and everything around me works for me.

Way 10: Historical and Cultural Contexts
The word narcissism that we talked about today could be traced back to the 1970, when Otto wrote this poem (Bayer). People who is narcissistic pursues the "ego ideal" (Bayer). Otto might want to reflect the prevailing issue in the society in his poem. The protagonist is obviously a typical narcissist patient. He tries to satisfy his vanity by selling his love and hurting other people. He plans to send out his love letters to different parties around Valentine's day. He analyzes people, like he knows ""she will not show it to anyone" (Otto 9), to make sure his master plan does not fail. These are all examples of overconfidence in his self and addiction to his works, which are narcissistic. So the conclusion in this section is, Otto is trying to paint a portrait of a Narcissistic Personality Disorder patient here.

Way 11: Theoretical Application
From the feminism point of view, the word "will" can also be interpreted. In the second paragraph, the author uses many "will"s to show the protagonist's confidence of what "she" would do step by step. This reveals the protagonist's inclination of sexism because he thinks every move of his woman is predictable. Naturally from this kind of expression, we can see the male's superiority over the female. Also, from the protagonist's targets--almost all females, we can see that the protagonist holds a view that the women can be bullied upon, and possibly with minor consequence. Also the protagonist can choose to mail his extra copy to an English male if it is only for someone who "understands" his work. The protagonist can also choose other holidays, like the teacher's day, mailing his several male professors to express his gratitude and mailing one copy to some magazine too, to execute his vanity. But he didn't. From this aspect, the poem again reflects the inferior social status of the female.

Way 12: Another Theoretical Application
From a Marxist Criticism point of view, this work is very rich. In line 3 Otto uses the word "imagery". Imagery is something illusional. It is generated by brain imagining, which is vague and immaterial. Prolonged imagination portrays a loser in most cultures since this kind of people do not work but only dream about things that do not exist. So this line might be interpreted as a non-progressive example by them. In addition, in the second paragraph the author employs the adjective "floored". According to dictionary.com, "floored" literally means to be brought down to floor or defeated. If we elaborate around its basic meaning, it is not hard to realize that floor is dimensionally very low. This might represent a "low standard". Actually, if a woman will be brought down by something as trivial as a love poem, something that can be filled with lies, she is likely to have the "low standards", or in the Marxist's eyes, lagging behind.

Way 13: Unifying Interpretation
To wrap up, Otto's poem portrays a Narcissistic Personality Disorder patient plays around with his own and other people's love for his vanity. In order to show off his skill, he composes a well written poem and designs a sophisticated setup around the sacred Valentine's day, he feels he is totally in control of the situation, which makes him satisfied. Sarcastically, by doing so, he cheaply has sold his love and the true meaning of the Valentine's day. In addition, the title "love poem" reveals that what he really loves is probably his poem, conversely, what the women like is his poem too, instead of him, the father of the poem.

Works Cited and Consulted
Bayer, Ethan A. __A Society of Narcissists__. 2002. 22 Jul. 2009 <[]>.

Dictionary.com, Definition of "floored", Dictionary.com, 27 Jul 2009 

Gale Group. Lon Otto 15 Aug. 2002. 22 Jul. 2009 <[]>

Gurstein, Rochelle. "'The culture of narcissism' revisited" __Salmagundi__, 2006 WilsonWeb, UW-Washington Co. Lib., West Bend, WI, 22 Jul 2009 <[|http://vnweb.hwwilsonweb.com]>

Hamlin, Janet. On Narcissism: __If Everyone Else Is So Damn Special, Where Does That Leave Me?__ 28 Feb 2007, 22 Jul 2009 <[] >

Merriam Webster, Definition of "genuine", Merriam Webster, 7 Jul 2009 [|http://www.dictionary.com]