Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Swap Stevens

Maura Kelly, in The Paris Review, on the literary equivalent of mismatched mixtapes:

Because we were on the same poems, I’d assumed we were on the same page. I thought Luke had been signaling the loftiness and grandeur of his feelings for me with verse. But I should’ve done a closer read. That first Stevens poem he sent me is about how one’s desires for unity can never be perfectly realized, about how even sexual union is an “imperfect paradise.” And yet bodies come together more easily than minds. Of course, some part of me must have known our thing was doomed. Why else would I have sent a poem about what happens when an affair comes to an end? It’s just that I never thought it would end so quickly.

Seriously, though, don’t break out Auden’s Lullaby until you’re way sure, or until you’re on your way out the door.