Poetry by William King, Martyn Lowery, Andrew Marvell, Liz Lochhead, John Cooper Clarke and Elizabeth Jennings

Poetry by William King, Martyn Lowery, Andrew Marvell, Liz Lochhead, John Cooper Clarke and Elizabeth Jennings

Introduction.

The hearts and partners theme contains the following poems:

'The Beggar Woman' by William King (Pre 1900)

'Our Love Now' by Martyn Lowery

'To His Coy Mistress' by Andrew Marvell (Pre 1900)

'Rapunzstiltskin' by Liz Lochhead

'i wanna be yours' by John Cooper Clarke

'One Flesh' by Elizabeth Jennings

As the title suggests, hearts and partners deals with love and

relationships. In your exam you will be expected to make comparisons

between the different poems and this lesson will help you to make the

connections you need to do this.

Poetic techniques

The hearts and partners selection features an impressive range of

poetic forms from the pop lyric derived 'i wanna be yours' to the

formal rhyming couplets and elaborate arguments of 'To His Coy

Mistress'. 'The Beggar Woman' is a simple narrative told in rhyming

couples, 'Our Love Now' is a free verse dialogue and 'Rapunzstiltskin'

also uses free verse to achieve its effects. 'One Flesh', in contrast

is a formal, rhymed meditation.

The most obvious poetic technique that these poems have in common is

their use of imagery.

Love and Sex

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Surprisingly, perhaps, the most sexually explicit poems in this

collection are the two older ones: 'The Beggar Woman' and 'To His Coy

Mistress'. Of the modern poems, none of them deal with the sexual side

of a relationship. Three poems, however, deal with the full spectrum

of sexual involvement in relationships. 'To His Coy Mistress' is an

attempt by a young man to persuade a young woma...

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...nt.

A fire grown cold

The metaphor in the last line, line 18, seems to sum up the idea that

pervades the poem. The death of passion with the consequent silence

and apparent separation are contained in the metaphor of a fire grown

cold. The speaker adds the thought of herself and her own conception:

Do they know they're old,

These two who are my father and mother

Whose fire from which I came, has now grown cold.

Here the speaker is wondering at the silence and separation of her

parents and pondering on the fact that she was conceived from their 'former

passion'. Look at the rhyme in 'old' and 'cold', and how it links the

concept of old age and lack of passion. The definite nature of this

rhyme is appropriate in a meditative poem in which the speaker has

arrived at some sort of conclusion in her thoughts.