First Poem For You

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Recommended: A little learning poem analysis

The poem “First Poem for You” by Kim Addonizio is a sonnet written by a woman contemplating on the permanence of her lover’s tattoos. The sonnet focuses on the speaker’s perspective of her lover’s tattoos as she appears to regard them with fascination and aversion. Upon closer analysis, it could be said that the speaker’s contemplation of her lover’s tattoos is a reflection of her perspective of their relationship. By comparing the permanence of her lover’s tattoos to the fleeting nature of relationships, the speaker addresses the uncertainty of their relationship and her desire for the relationship to become permanent.

The level of detail the speaker uses in her descriptions of the visual images on her lover’s body suggests that there is …show more content…

In literature, darkness is often symbolically associated with fear and the unknown. The speaker establishes her fear of the tattoos in the beginning of the poem, as she comments that “I like to touch your tattoos in complete darkness, when I can’t see them.” She approaches the tattoos with a sense of cautiousness as she acknowledges the existence of the tattoos “in complete darkness” without actually seeing the tattoos. In doing so, the speaker attempts to come to terms with the permanence of the tattoos without having any visual contact. Her fear of the tattoos’ permanent nature is reinforced at the end of the poem, where she comments that “Such permanence is terrifying. So I touch them in the dark; but touch them, trying.” The speaker explicitly states her perspective on the permanent quality of tattoos, as she explains that “such permanence is terrifying. Her fear of the permanence of tattoos has an underlying a tone of wonder, as she spends a majority of the poem admiring the tattoos, claiming that she “love[s] to kiss the pictures in your skin”. By commenting at the end of the poem that she is terrified after reminiscing about the tattoos with fondness, it is suggested that there her fear has an underlying sense of wonder, and that she aspires that her relationship will persist much like the

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