Lovers' Quarrels in Love, 20 cents the First Quarter Mile

683 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Managing conflicts in relationships essay

Lovers' Quarrels in Love, 20 cents the First Quarter Mile

Kenneth Fearing's poem "Love, 20 cents the First Quarter Mile," expresses the wide range of emotions experienced in an argument. The poem depicts the all too familiar situation of a lover's quarrel in which the persona, whom we can assume is male, struggles to resolve an argument during a taxi ride. During his attempts to resolve the quarrel, the persona experiences a variety of emotions ranging from apologetic to accusatory to sarcastic to romantic. In this poem, the reader gains a personal insight into the conflicting and rapidly changing feelings of the persona.

The first stanza of the poem leads the reader to believe that the persona has been a less than perfect companion to his counterpart. However, the persona seems willing to concede that he "may" have committed a few transgressions, and seems apologetic for them. He concedes that he "may have lied to and about"(line 1) his companion, and that he also "damned [her] extravagance, maligned [her] tastes,/ libeled [her] relatives, and slandered a few of [her] friends"(4-5). "Nevertheless," he entreats, "come back"(7).

In the second stanza, the persona expresses his willingness to concede to his companion, as long as she is willing to make some of her own concessions.

"I will agree to forget the statements that you issued/...to the neighbors...,/ and you will forget that figment of you imagination, the blonde/ from Detroit;/ I will agree that your lady friend...is not crazy.../but on the contrary rather bright,/ and you will concede that...Steinburg is neither a drunk/ nor a swindler,...

... middle of paper ...

... We will have a celebration to end all celebrations"(28). He reveals how petty he thinks the argument was by contradicting his earlier concessions. "We will invite...Steinburg, who is off the wagon, by the way, and that insane/ woman who lives upstairs..."(31-32). Apparently, the storm of the argument has passed, and the reader feels a sense of calmness and resolution.

During this poem readers intimately experience the broad range of feelings experienced by the persona in a short period of time. The significance of the title, "Love, 20 cents the First Quarter Mile," is that the persona is not only paying for a cab ride, but for the time it takes to placate his companion and convince her of his love for her that will outlast even the pettiest of arguments.

Show More
Related

  • Capital Punishment Sherman Alexie

    1361 Words  | 3 Pages

    At this point, the speaker's newfound empathy toward the killer prompts his diatribe about American support of capital punishment. He begins with a hypothetical portrayal of an audience chaotically discussing the meaning of the word "kill," each person exclaiming "how they spell it" and "what it means to them." Subsequently, he recounts a story about insensitive reporters at a hanging, followed by a claim that "we throw killers in one grave / and victims in another. We form sides / and have two separate feasts." While the speaker may seem to be utilizing the description of the audience and the story of the reporters in order to denounce the mindset of his peers, he is in fact condemning his own former mentality. By denying five times that he is a witness, the speaker avoids the guilt that results from involvement in the death of another man. Through his repeated use of the phrase "I am not a witness," he essentially enables and catalyzes the execution of the killer, dismissing his humanity and conforming to the opinion that he deserves to be killed; however, once the speaker recognizes his fault and his conformity to this mindset, the tone of the poem suddenly shifts. The speaker's empathy for the killer reaches its maximum when he fully understands the pain of the condemned and finally sees the killer as his equal, which prompts his own admission of guilt and prior indifference: "I am a

    Read More

  • Mary Gaitskill The Other Place Summary

    1050 Words  | 3 Pages

    The narrator has a knack for bringing up traumatic times in his life, but passing it off in an indifferent tone. He believes that

    Read More

  • Laws, Lawyers, and Punishment in the Victorian Period

    753 Words  | 2 Pages

    -Common Law: the “law of the land”(Pool 127), which was built up over many centuries

    Read More

  • Free Hamlet Essays: Teaching Deception and Selfishness in Hamlet

    1079 Words  | 3 Pages

    scene III, he admits to himself that he feels no remorse for what he has done, saying, ?But,

    Read More

  • Lucie's Loving Ways in Charles Dickens´A Tale of Two Cities

    683 Words  | 2 Pages

    The effects of love and sacrifice on one’s life can be shown through the character of Lucie Manette in the novel A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. The way Lucie applies warmth to her friends and family and sacrifices for them has a greater impact than anything else could possibly do. In fact, loving gestures have the power to do anything. They can brighten moods and ameliorate one’s day. Overall, Love is a powerful feeling. It can be defined in many ways, but is always an important emotion to have. Without it, humans are empty. It is a necessary part of living; with it, anything is possible.

    Read More

  • The Kite Runner Quotes

    1329 Words  | 3 Pages

    *the narrator's friend, Rahim Khan, is expressing indirectly that no matter what the narrator has done in his past, he will forgive him, and help him.

    Read More

  • Julius Caesar's Responsibility for His Own Death in William Shakespeare's Play

    872 Words  | 2 Pages

    which is why he declares the seer to be a crazy dreamer and does not

    Read More

  • Love By Philip Rossetti Essay

    1806 Words  | 4 Pages

    Love plays an important role in most physical and emotional relationships. Love is a word that can prove difficult to define or even compare to other emotions. This is due to the diversity of meaning and the complexity of the emotion itself. Everyone has been in love at least once before and has gotten a taste of all the good and bad things that come with it. Christina Rossetti’s “Song” presents some of the good parts of love while Philip Larkin’s “Talking in Bed” shows us some of the bad parts of love. Larkin’s poem presents a failing relationship where communication has failed between a couple and things are getting more and more difficult. Rossetti’s poem presents a wholly different view on love; it is told from the viewpoint of someone talking to his or her lover about what said lover should do after the speaker dies. The love between them seems better, more powerful and good. The two poems also present wholly different attitudes towards “The End,” whether that is the end of life or the end of the relationship. Larkin presents the end as something dark and sad, difficult to cope with. Rossetti, on the other hand, talks about the end as just another beginning, a chance to start over in a new world. Finally, the two poems represent remembrance in different ways. Larkin’s presents memory as something extremely important while Rossetti implies that it does not matter whether we remember or not.

    Read More

  • The Kornilov Affair

    1499 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Kornilov Affair James Joll describes the Kornilov affair as "a failed attempt at a military Putsch by a right-wing general" (p.230) in his book Europe Since 1870. This view reflects the official government version at the time. This essay intends to see how accurate a picture this version gave of the Kornilov affair. The Kornilov affair officially began on September 9, when Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Army, General L. C. Kornilov, brought a corps to Petrograd and disobeyed an order of dismissal by Alexander Kerensky, head of the Provisional Government[1].

    Read More

  • Parent and Son Relationship in one of Nye, Naomi Shihab´s Poems

    638 Words  | 2 Pages

    In a typical family, there are parents that expected to hear things when their teenager is rebelling against them: slamming the door, shouting at each other, and protests on what they could do or what they should not do. Their little baby is growing up, testing their wings of adulthood; they are not the small child that wanted their mommy to read a book to them or to kiss their hurts away and most probably, they are thinking that anything that their parents told them are certainly could not be right. The poem talks about a conflict between the author and her son when he was in his adolescence. In the first stanza, a misunderstanding about a math problem turns into a family argument that shows the classic rift between the generation of the parent and the teenager. Despite the misunderstandings between the parent and child, there is a loving bond between them. The imagery, contrasting tones, connotative diction, and symbolism in the poem reflect these two sides of the relationship.

    Read More

  • An Analysis of To Have without Holding by Marge Piercy

    1382 Words  | 3 Pages

    She defines her idea of what is right in a relationship by describing how hard and painful it is for her to stray from that ideal in this instance. As the poem evolves, one can begin to see the author having a conflict with values, while simultaneously expressing which values are hers and which are unnatural to her. She accomplishes this accounting of values by personalizing her position in a somewhat unsettling way throughout the poem.

    Read More

  • Love, Decisions, and Sacrifice in Robert Frost's Love and a Question

    920 Words  | 2 Pages

    Love is a big part of human life. Love in this poem can be described in two different ways. One way is the love of helping people. The other way is the love of a relationship. The love of a relationship is more than a feeling when it is real. It is a sensation, a connection, something that can not be replaced. In the poem the speaker is torn between the two types of love at first. It is shown in the first two stanzas that the speaker does not know what to choose. Either to let the stranger into the house and not make love to his new wife, or not let the stranger in and send him out into the dangerous night and make love to his wife. The last line of the poem shows that the speaker in someway have feelings for the stranger. The speaker wish he knew what would happen to the stranger after he sent him out into the night.

    Read More

  • Comparing Women in A Man's Requirements and A Letter to Her Husband

    644 Words  | 2 Pages

    Authors use poetry to creatively present attitudes and opinions. “A Man’s Requirements,” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and “A Letter to Her Husband, Absent upon Public Employment” are two poems with distinct attitudes about love that contain different literary approaches. In both of the poems, love is addressed from a different perspective, producing the difference in expectation and presentation, but both suggest the women are subservient in the relationships.

    Read More

  • Spinster, by Sylvia Plath

    980 Words  | 2 Pages

    Foremost, in the first stanza, Plath gives the visual imagery of a woman taking a walk in the midst of spring with her lover. What ordinarily would be a pleasant image, is depicted as very formal and dull as the walk is “ceremonious” and the male companion is not a romantic lover, but is rather just one of the woman’s suitors (line 2). By using such words as “ceremonious” and “suitor” to explain what may seem as an enjoyable experience on the surface, the woman implies that she is indifferent towards the man and just walks with him to keep up appearances or in other words to do what is customary with the norms of courtship. The woman also reveals a considerable amount of displeasure “...

    Read More

  • Dependency of Love

    947 Words  | 2 Pages

    Love is the ubiquitous force that drives all people in life. If people did not want, give, or receive love, they would never experience life because it is the force that completes a person. People rely on this seemingly absent force although it is ever-present. Elizabeth Barrett Browning is an influential poet who describes the necessity of love in her poems from her book Sonnets from the Portuguese. She writes about love based on her relationship with her husband. Her life is dependent on him, and she expresses this same reliance of love in her poetry. She uses literary devices to strengthen her argument for the necessity of love. The necessity of love is a major theme in Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “Sonnet 14,” “Sonnet 43,” and “Sonnet 29.”

    Read More

More about Lovers' Quarrels in Love, 20 cents the First Quarter Mile

Open Document