The Artist Within

This is the offering that showed up in my inbox this morning from Poem-A-Day. It's interesting how, sometimes ~ actually, quite often ~ the story of an artist can alter the way one sees his/her work. This is one of those cases.

At a Dinner Party

by Amy Levy

 

With fruit and flowers the board is decked,
    The wine and laughter flow;
I'll not complain--could one expect
    So dull a world to know?

You look across the fruit and flowers,
    My glance your glances find.--
It is our secret, only ours,
    Since all the world is blind. 

 
Amy Levy was a British poet and novelist born in London in 1861. Her poetry and other writings are often celebrated for their exploration and interest in feminist themes, Jewish female identity, and same-sex love. She committed suicide on September 10, 1889, two months shy of her twenty-eighth birthday.