The change of word order possibly signifies a distant recollection or is simply an attempt to make the title "more Latin",[3] adding "a certain air of elegance" that is missing in the more boring "My Girl".
[4] The poem does not sound at all like Catullus; Baker characterizes it as a blend of Romance and the Song of Solomon, pointing, however, to the line "Eater of all things lovely – Time!"
"[3] The poem highlights the contrast between the living beauty of Cummings' lady and the now-dead female ideals of the writers of the times past.
Mine is a little lovelier than any of your ladies were Breen suggests that, excluding the overabundance of "concrete sensuousness of physical detail", there is little to note in this "juvenile in theme" poem.
[7] Von Abele, on the contrary, describes the poem as "a delightful piece" where historical allusions to Salome, Tristram, Bagdad,[clarification needed] Chaucer and Semiramis maintain the distance between the physical body of the girl being praised and the reader, with the latter prevented from visualizing the core of the presentation,[2] ... her large and shapely thighs in whose dome the trembling bliss of a kingdom wholly is ... through the use of "playful euphuism", commonly found in the English love poetry.