Humans have always questioned the meaning of love. Every individual has a unique understanding of this word, be it chemicals released in our brains or the predestined string of fate, and each of these six poems – all written in different forms – explores a different type of love. Rossetti”s Remember and Browning”s My Last Duchess both include a controlling male figure, whereas A Mother in a Refugee Camp by Achebe and Sonnet 116 by Shakespeare are based on the idea of “true love”. Lastly, La Belle Dame Sans Merci by Keats and “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” by Thomas revolve around the separation of lovers. This essay will examine the diverse ways in which love has been presented in six poems from the chosen anthology.
Chiefly, Christina Rossetti”s Remember is often considered to convey committed love, one that puts the other before itself. In Remember, the dying speaker, supposedly Rossetti herself, implores her lover not to forget her even after she is “gone into the silent land”. At first, the poem may appear to merely be the pleas of a persistent lover; however, concealed within the loving words, the persona”s tone is more complex than initially appears.
On one hand, the poem [precisely/
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Furthermore, the meaning of “hold” could also double as “being held back”, as the persona might feel restrained and oppressed by the love of the other. Rossetti also implies this in the lines, “day by day/ You tell me of our future that you planned”. The persona’s lover is in control of both of their lives, “you” planned “our future”, and constantly reminds her of this. “Day by day” shows the repetitive nature of their love, every day repeating the same things to the point that their love has become boring and
Relationships begin based on a mutual attraction and often end due to betrayal and loss of love. Because of the end of relationship, it’s common for people to feel deceived and lament the loss of their lover. In “For That He Looked Not Upon Her,” Gascoigne utilizes a sonnet form, metaphors of the mouse and fly, and grievous diction to address the sadness and frustration of betrayal experienced in the speaker’s broken relationship. Gascoigne’s structure remains typical for the time period, but adds an opinion different from many sonnet writers of the time, addressing the negatives following an ended relationship. Through the use of a traditional sonnet, Gascoigne keeps the structure of the poem predictable and constant.
OPEN: With Her Words, Poem (fig. 1). Her Words is a poetic autoethnographic response that portray an experience I had as a student in an Alter/Native Anthropology course during my first year as a junior transfer student in the autumn of 2017 at the University of Washington. The framework of the poem is inspired by Maiana Minahal’s Poem on Trying to Love without Fear and is an example of my experimentation with poetry, as an ethnographic methodology, in my responses to assignments and my experiences of learning within the dual sites of my independent research and my anthropology course. We had been assigned to read a chapter in Patricia Leavy’s book Method Meets Art: Art-Based Research Practice that discusses the values and practices of poetry
In order to depict many different images of love, William Shakespeare writes about the challenges of love between Romeo and Juliet. The playwright presents several aspects of love, such as unrequited, parental, and romantic love. Shakespeare’s message, while originating in the 1500s, is not unique to themes of love. In fact, this theme resurfaces many times throughout the history of literature. For instance, Zora Neale Hurston visualizes different images of love in her 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God.
In “The Trouble with Poetry” the speaker touches on the same idea of how poetry is so forced, and how it has lost its meaning as an expression and has become more of an addiction among
It has been said that “beauty is pain” and in the case of this poem, it is quite literal. “For That He Looked Not Upon Her” written by George Gascoigne, a sixteenth century poet, is a poem in which the speaker cannot look upon the one he loves so that he will not be trapped by her enhanced beauty and looks. In the form of an English sonnet, the speaker uses miserable diction and visual imagery to tell the readers and his love why he cannot look upon her face. Containing three quatrains and a rhyming couplet at the end, this poem displays a perfect English sonnet using iambic pentameter to make it sound serious and conversational. This is significant because most sonnets are about love and each quatrain, in English sonnets, further the speaker’s
Oscillating between the progression of life through the memories and experience of an individual is expressed through Gwen Harwood’s poem The Violets. The poem encapsulates the human experience as both integral to the formation of our perceptions of life and the timelessness that it provides to the audience. Gwen Harwood is able to create a text that goes beyond the way we respond, creating a deeper awareness of the complexity of human attitudes and behaviours. The matrilineal theme reveals that the core of the poem The Violets stem through childhood memories as a component to reveal our own personal reconciliations.
We live in a society that has increasingly demoralizes love, depicting it as cruel, superficial and full of complications. Nowadays it is easy for people to claim that they are in love, even when their actions say otherwise, and it is just as easy to claim that they are not when they indeed are. Real love is difficult to find and keeping it alive is even harder, especially when one must overcome their own anxieties and uncertainties to embrace its presence. This is the main theme depicted in Russell Banks’ short story “Sarah Cole: A Type of Love Story,” as well as in Richard Bausch’s “The Fireman’s Wife.” These narratives, although similar in some ways, are completely different types of love stories.
Romance comes in all different forms and sizes, and Calbert understands that along with these she apprends why people fall in and out of love. Falling in love has a sense of vulnerability that requires taking risks that people are “willing to fail, / why we will still let ourselves fall in love,” in order to sustain real love. Calbert ends her poem with listing the romances with her husband and vows, “knowing nothing other than [their] love” because that is all that matters to her
The poem, in brief, is about the struggle the speaker faces as he prepares for war and attempts to explain to his lover how important honor is to him, surpassing even his feelings for her. It is written creatively, with a unique style. The poem is also personal and temporal, a trait of poems of this era. The poem is written in a conversational tone and is read as if by a male writer to a female lover. Lovelace weaves poetic techniques such as assonance, and metaphor together to create a good rhythm, and a theme based upon honor.
“Someone will Remember Us,” holds the hope that even in death, someone will remember and thus those people will be a part of history. However, in Renée Vivien’s translation of the poem, concepts such as, “erotic suffering, obsession, and anxiety” are present. Nonetheless, those negative emotions resulted in “eternal devotion” within the poem (36). Through the translation of Sappho’s poem, Vivien takes on the role of Sappho’s lover, and thus she proves that someone did remember her. Love believes that Sappho and Vivien both represent loneliness and isolation within the poem.
Throughout the text, the speaker uses a diverse array of literary techniques to demonstrate the multidimensional nature of their love towards a lover. First, passionate love is conveyed in the spatial metaphor of loving with “the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach.” Here, love is a substance that fills up and infatuates the speaker, creating a powerful drive that forces her to express it. This spatial love is overwhelming and grand, which establishes the passionate and fervent tone of the poem.
Overwhelmed by the fondness you have for your beloved, you often try to finds ways to preserve it. In Edmund Spenser's poem, “One day I wrote her name upon the strand,” the speaker uses imagery, metaphors, and personification to illustrate how love can be immortalized through poetry. The poem begins with the speaker using vivid imagery to depict a romantic setting on the beach with his beloved. To express his passionate feelings towards her, he, “[writes] her name upon the strand” (1).
Love and relationship between man and woman has been the focal point of countless literary works, music pieces and other art objects since times immemorial. Depending on the personal experience and worldview of the author, the feeling of love has been interpreted in many individual ways. Consequently, to find two masterpieces which depict love similarly seems inconceivable. The texts under analysis – J.L. Borges’ “What can I hold you with?” and the song “Anything for Your Love” by E. Clapton – although written by two contemporary artists and elaborating the image of love, produce an absolutely different effect on the reader.
What is Love? If you were to search it up you get the vague definition which reads: an intense feeling of deep affection. But it’s so much more, it has so many different meanings to people. Even wrong meanings that people associate it with. Love comes in many different forms, such as: friendship, family, and partnership.
by John Keats, “Remember” by Christina Rossetti and “Piano” by D. H. Lawrence, this essay will explore how and why different poets present the theme of love in a variety of ways. ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci’ is a romantic ballad written by English poet John Keats in 1819, when the artistic, literary and intellectual movement of romanticism was at its peak. Set in the medieval period, Keats aims to use this setting to juxtapose the different perspective people, originating from different times, had towards the theme of love. Through the relationship of the knight and the woman as well as the setting of ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci’; Keats is able to reflect upon the faithful and truthful expression of love in the medieval times as well as the freedom of individual expression and imagination in the romantic period.