Why a crystal goblet and bread and knife?
What exactly does the author mean when he uses the term 'litany'?
Is litany a replacement for someones name?
You are, you aren't, you may be, but you aren't. I am, but I'm also not. You are still and always will be, somehow.
He's bashing the original poem. He doesn't seem like he's actually trying to write a love poem, it seems to me that he's instead writing to mock the original piece and succeeding very well. His opening is the regular love poem, comparing whomever to a bread and knife, a goblet and wine, dew in the grass and the sun in the sky. The strange thing is that the first 2 metaphors are odd ways to compare somebody, and they were placed before the 2 metaphors that actually made sense. Why would he put the 2 metaphors that made sense behind the 2 that didn't?
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The sentence that strikes out at me is your first sentence, "You are, you aren't, you may be, but you aren't. I am, but I'm also not. You are still and always will be, somehow." I feel this sentence perfectly sums up the entire poem. The whole poem is a contradiction. At the end of reading it one is completely confused as to what they just read and in many ways it is very unflattering to his subject. Billy Collins is poking fun at love poems and putting a spin on the typical you-are-a-perfect-sunrise poems. It is actually very comical.
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