on poetry and the moon

I am convinced that the first lyric poem was written at night, and that the moon was witness to the event and that the event was witness to the moon. ... It has been noted many times that there are more sad poems than happy poems in this world, and though I have not fed them all into a computer and read the printout, I would guess that the moon occurs more frequently than the sun as an image in lyric poetry. And I wonder, why? I could start with a dozen reasons: insomnia, the moon's association with death, one of poetry's most common themes (yet the moon is equally associated with fertility); or the fact most of the poems in this world have supposedly been written by heterosexual men, who desire women, and the moon is embodied, in so many languages, as a woman, though that's not universally true ... Let me offer a simple observation. There is a greater contrast between the moon and the night sky than there is between the sun and the daytime sky. And this contrast is more conducive to sorrow, which always separates or isolates itself, than it is to happiness, which always joins or blends.

—Mary Ruefle, 'Poetry and the Moon' in Madness, Rack, and Honey