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Dictionary Lesson (Free verse) by Dovina

When I said, “I love you,” and soon realized its reciprocal, “You love me,” and its result, “We are in love,” and much later, with its contrary, “I don’t love you,” and finally its opposite, “I hate you,” and when, after a long hiatus, its many reverses blured into, “I have no feeling for you,” I realized my dictionary is a history, written ahead of fact, a compendium of devolution.

zodiac 21-Nov-04/11:13 PM
re: "Of course, hate is the opposite of love in the minds of most people,"

Yes. And bum. And that's not the point of your poem. The point is to use mathematical/philosophical/dictionary terms (I believe we've at least agreed on that) to transform love into hate. Anyway, try to worm out of your having twice performed the same action (ie, opposite/contrary) on "I love you" and come out with different answers.

[DIGRESSION: Let's suppose for a moment that contrary really means what you want it to, rather than what it does - ie, roughly, 'something different from the original direction,' the way a "contrary" course for a boat on a heading of 180 degrees might be, oh, 90 degrees. Or, alternately, the way a contrary opinion to the Bush Administration's assertion, "The war in Iraq was justified and excellently implemented" might be "The war in Iraq was necessary, but implemented badly." This, you'll see, is not an exact opposite according to your definition, but the Bush Administration still supresses it as contrary. Okay?

Well, you see why it's still a bum word to use in your poem, right? Because then there would be an infinite number of contraries for any given thing, when a huge part of the basis for your poem is that, given the phrase 'I love you', "ITS CONTRARY" is "I don't love you" and that's why there are so "many reverses". BUM!!! RESOUNDINGLY BUM!!!! Why isn't "its contrary" simply "I love you, but as a friend"? Or "I love you even more than I did"? Because then your life wouldn't be a "Compendium of devolution"!!!!]




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