I've been assigned "Ode to a Model" for this post, a poem so jam packed with wordplay that it couldn't be anything but Nabokovian. A few phrases stand out in particular, however.
"butterfly eyelash" - Of course Nabokov would mention this passion of his in his poetry. Besides that, the repetition of the "eye" sound and the "L" sound resonated with me, and reminded me a lot of "Guilty of killing Quilty."
"from dead leaf on the sod / to red leaf on the breeze" - Once again, the repetition of sounds here is lovely and oh-so Nabokov. The use of nature imagery to describe and address an attractive woman is also something I think of as characteristic of Nabokov, keeping in mind Charlotte's lilies in the scene in Lolita where the title character is finally introduced.
"Can one -- somebody asked -- / rhyme 'star' and 'disaster?'" - Nabokov has a flair for interjections, and this line is certainly no exception.
In terms of the meaning of the poem as a whole, it's very reminiscent of both the main characters in The Enchanter and Lolita, though I'm assuming the titular model is at least close to a legal age. The speaker of the poem isn't as overtly sexist, but the sexism is still present (a woman isn't "real" if she's a model? Really?), and while I'm not familiar with any Nabokov works besides the ones assigned in class, from what I've gathered of his novels I don't think that this kind of speaker is exactly a rarity in his writing.
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