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Popular Culture Review
self-indulgence and wine-soaked sentimentality are clearly evident in his
rhapsodic yearning to travel alone in a tear and sparkle in the saintly martyrdom
of alcoholic hopelessness:
New thresholds, new anatomies! Wine talons
Build freedom up about me and distill
This competence—to travel in a tear
Sparkling alone, within another’s will. (29-32)
Apparently, however, the persona has not had enough, although he has far
exceeded his limit and is now completely out of control (as with any chronically
addicted drinker, he r V