My Love Sent Me a List

While the poem presents what seems to be a breakup, the theme of love is still present. Specifically, the poem’s choice of Othello as literary allusion frames it with jealousy. In Othello, the main character, Othello, sows the seeds of his own demise because he allows his jealous associate, Iago (who is angry about not getting a promotion), to make him doubt his wife, Desdemona. Iago convinces Othello that Desdemona is cheating on him, and this drives Othello into a rage. Ultimately, Othello kills Desdemona and himself after realizing Iago has poisoned him with jealousy.

Davis alludes to the play at the end of her poem: “And yet these mores undid but his own plea(s)(e) / And left, none-the-less, the Greater Moor of me” (Lines 13-14). This is an allusion for two reasons: One, the poem has already invoked Shakespeare with the sonnet form and with the first few lines; and two, Othello, in the play, is a Moor, so the use of “Greater Moor” underscores that there is some wordplay at work here. Davis is playing off the word “more” that she used in the previous line. This allusion is complicated, but when the characters in the poem are broken down, the “Love’s” letter has shown his own jealousy and self-doubt, making him a stand-in for Iago, the jealous villain of the play. The last line of the poem describes the speaker as the “Greater Moor,” or Othello. At the beginning of the play, Othello is a great general and a loving husband, and Iago, from his first speech, is judgmental, hateful, and infected with jealousy. In his first speech, for example, he says of Michael Cassio, the man who has been given the promotion Iago wants:

A fellow almost damn’d in a fair wife;

That never set a squadron in the field,

Nor the division of a battle knows

More than a spinster; unless the bookish theoric,

Wherein the toged consuls can propose

As masterly as he: mere prattle, without practise (1.1.20-26)

These lines are similar to the “Love’s” insults in Davis’s poem:

More capable of extra- and inter-

Polation. More well traveled -rounded multi-

Lingual. More practiced in so many matters

More: physical, attractive, musical,

Politic [...] academic [...] social (Lines 7-11)

The “Love” shares the same kind of jealousy-disguised-as-spite that Iago feels for Cassio (and Othello). By invoking the play at the end of the poem, Davis directs our attention to the play’s ultimate theme, which is jealousy and the power jealousy has over love. What is unclear, however, is where the speaker goes after the poem ends. While the poem ends with the speaker declaring herself the “Greater Moor,” suggesting she is represented by Othello at the beginning of the play, Othello ultimately succumbs to his own jealousy, which leads to his death. Davis’s poem never reveals where the speaker goes once the poem ends.