Dove Sta Amore (1958). Summary and Description

This poem is a departure for Ferlinghetti. Instead of the long, spidery lines and sometimes freewheeling feel of his typical verse despite its serious undertones, “Dove Sta Amore” is a playful, lyrical poem, which features Ferlinghetti performing sonic variations on the Italian phrase dove sta amore, translated as “here lies love.” While the poem appears playful, however, there is also a serious undercurrent, so that it is not merely a series of playful variations but also a profound meditation on the nature of both love and language.

The poem begins with a refrain that will be repeated at the poem’s conclusion with a few slight variations: “Dove sta amore / Where lies love / Dove sta amore / Here lies love” (ll. 1-4). The poem thus begins with both a fairly regular rhythm and a profound question prompted by the speaker’s search for love. The middle of the poem sees the speaker again playing with language but also making some profound statements about the nature of desire. After mentioning that a ring dove, a bird, is singing a love song with “lyrical delight,” the speaker tells us: “Hear love’s hillsong / Love’s true willsong / Love’s low plainsong / Too sweet painsong / In passages of night” (ll. 7-11).

Ferlinghetti here demonstrates a subtle understanding of how rhythm and meter can add to a poem’s complexity. Note how lines 7-10 have exactly the same rhythm and then note how, despite the sameness of rhythm, each line expresses a slightly different emotion. The lines that end in hill- song and willsong seem somehow positive, implying that love’s song can be sung from a hilltop or in the countryside and that a love song possesses a lover’s “true” will. Even though the rhythm stays the same, however, lines 8 and 9 have an almost despairing tinge, indicating that the love song is low and plain, and that it may be too self-indulgent (“too sweet”) and painful.

The conclusion of the poem repeats the opening refrain with a few minor variations: “Dove sta amore / here lies love / The ring dove love / Dove sta amore / here lies love” (ll. 12-16). By mimicking the opening refrain, Ferlinghetti not only imbues the poem with a songlike feel, but also lends the poem a circular feel, as if implying that the cycle of desire is never-ending. Ferlinghetti demonstrates his versatility with this poem but also, with relatively simple form and composition, reminds us that love is an often complex and elusive emotion.

For Discussion or Writing
1. Compare “Dove Sta Amore” with the anonymous medieval lyrics “Western Wind” and “My Lief Is Faren in Londe”:

“Western Wind”
Western wind, when will thou blow
The small rain down can rain?
Christ, if my love were in my arms
And I in my bed again

“My Lief Is Faren in Londe”
My lief is faren in londe-
Allas, why is she so?
And I am so sore bonde
I may nat come her to.
She hath myn herte in holde
Wherever she ride or go—
With trewe love a thousand folde.

What are the moods of each poem? How has Ferlinghetti adapted the older lyric conventions to his own love song?

2. How does rhythm function in this poem? How does Ferlinghetti use repetition and rhyme in concert with the poem’s subject matter?