Beth Ann Fennelly poems from “Heating and Cooling”

“Married Love” poems portray love in a different light from Sappho’s love poems. Sappho writes about love in an all-powerful thing that she can’t possibly control or battle against. She is submissive to it and finds experiencing it a blessing—a privilege, a desire. She is ‘longing’ in many of her poems. On the other hand, Beth Ann Fennelly writes about love in a much more practical and realistic setting: she literally talks about the mundane aspects of married life. Love, for Fennelly, is something experienced, but not something powerful or encompassing. It is simply a part of life and relationships. Both poets portray some raw emotions of love in their poem—Sappho with her unwavering desire for a woman and Fennelly with her husband’s jealousy: “it’s easy to imagine my husband’s feelings of inadequacy”. But even while Fennelly writes about love in a much more mundane way, she doesn’t deny the power it can hold in her poem “Sweet Nothing” when discussing that she regrets not saying ‘I love you” before her father’s death. She understands the power of love, even if it used more for her self satisfaction.