Andrew Marvell's To His Coy Mistress And Sharon Olds '

In the beginning of Sharon Olds’ Last Night the speaker is in passionate lust, nevertheless, the opposite transpires when the speaker becomes aware that she fell in love. In Andrew Marvell’s To His Coy Mistress, the speaker initiates with the impression that he is in passionate love with his mistress; however, it is quickly perceived that the speaker is only interested in passionate lust. While these poems equally signify carpe diem, they connote it in different ways. Both poems have unique views of what love and passion mean. These two poems use effects of irony and nature imagery to convey their passions.

Passionate love has a sexual theme to it in Sharon Olds’ poem Last Night. The poem takes different twists and turns while the speaker is living through this passionate sexual experience. In the first line the speaker declares: “I am almost afraid” (1). The speaker is implying that they are afraid of this experience and love. The second line of Last

No kiss / no tenderness—more like killing, death-grip” (12-13). The speakers journey, moreover, invokes violent imagery: “holding to life, genitals / like violent hands clasped tight” (14-15). The speaker doesn’t know what is going on, she is holding on for dear life, and she is afraid. The paradoxical irony in the next line, “barley moving, more like being closed / in a great jaw and eaten, and the screaming” (16-17), showcases the violent imagery and the fact that the speaker is closed and has not fully come out of the chrysalis or the experience. The raw sexual experience is coming to a close in the next lines: “I groan to remember it, and when we started / to die, then I refuse to remember / the way a drunkard forgets” (18-20). The speaker’s use of started to die is distinctly winding up to the end of the passionate experience. This moment is a build up to the climax, it’s a moment that cannot be described nor