This is Plahm at his most charmingly evasive—a poem that announces a philosophical topic (virtù, the Renaissance concept of personal excellence, political cunning, and moral force) and then cheerfully refuses to discuss it. The opening—”Ah, now we can relax. / It’s not that grand of an ideology. / After all, it only has FIVE letters”—is a deliberate misdirection: virtù is one of the most debated concepts in Western philosophy (Machiavelli built The Prince around it), and dismissing it as “not that grand” because of its letter count is the poem’s first joke and its governing strategy. The poem will discuss virtù by not discussing it, defining the word through everything that surrounds it rather than through direct examination.

The pivot—”It’s been five years since I / met you. That’s what’s important”—reveals the poem’s actual subject. The five letters of “virtù” are a numerical coincidence with the five years of knowing the Muse, and the coincidence is the poem’s structural bridge: the word and the relationship share a number, and the relationship wins. Virtù as philosophical concept is interesting; five years with the beloved is important. The hierarchy is declared and the poem moves on.

The French catalog is the poem’s body and its pleasure center. The question about the accent—”Is that a French influence?”—opens a floodgate of Francophilia that the poem rides with evident delight. The catalog moves through domains with the energy of a man browsing a Parisian street: fashion (Chanel, Saint Laurent, Dior), food (onion soup, escargot, bourguignon, cassoulet, crème brûlée, éclairs, croissants), political philosophy (Liberty, Equality, Fraternity), women of history and culture (Catherine de Medici, Simone de Beauvoir, Piaf, Bardot), and cheese. The “French fries, oops, that’s Belgian” aside is the poem’s best comic beat—a self-correction that demonstrates both the speaker’s enthusiasm (throwing everything French at the wall) and his honesty (catching the error and flagging it rather than hoping no one notices).

The poem’s secret argument is that virtù—excellence, force, the quality that makes a person or a culture extraordinary—is not an abstraction but a catalog of specific, sensory, lived experiences. French virtù is not a philosophical position; it is brie, it is Piaf’s voice, it is the architecture of a croissant. And by extension, the Muse’s virtù is not her moral excellence but her specific, sensory, irreducible presence—the five years of knowing her, which the poem values more than five centuries of philosophical debate. The poem never returns to the word after the opening; it doesn’t need to. The catalog is the definition.

A poem that succeeds through charm rather than architecture—the catalog of French culture is delivered with such infectious enthusiasm that the reader forgets the poem promised a philosophical meditation and never delivered one. The evasion is the point: by declining to define virtù and instead listing its manifestations (Chanel, Piaf, croissants, brie), the poem argues that excellence is known through experience rather than explanation, which is itself a Machiavellian position. The five-letters/five-years pivot is the poem’s structural hinge and its most emotionally honest moment—the entire history of Western philosophy weighed against the history of knowing one person, and the person wins instantly. The French catalog is well-paced, moving through fashion, food, politics, culture, and cheese with the energy of a dinner-party conversation that keeps finding new courses to serve. The “French fries, oops, that’s Belgian” correction is the poem’s funniest line and its most endearing: a man so eager to praise France that he accidentally annexes Belgian cuisine, then catches himself with a grin. The juxtaposition of Catherine de Medici (political power, poison, manipulation—virtù in its Machiavellian sense) alongside Brigitte Bardot (beauty, cinema, animal rights) is probably accidental but actually maps the word’s dual meaning: virtù as cunning and virtù as excellence, political force alongside cultural grace. Where the poem is limited is in its abrupt ending—the catalog stops at cheese without a closing that ties the French inventory back to either the word or the Muse. The poem opens a frame (what is virtù?) and a relationship (five years), catalogs French culture with delight, and then stops. A closing couplet connecting the cheese back to the beloved—or connecting the catalog’s variety to the variety of the Muse’s own excellence—might have given the poem the structural resolution its opening promises. But the catalog’s energy carries the poem past its missing ending, and the reader finishes smiling, which may be all the virtù this poem needs. A poem that proves the best definitions are edible.