A Journey of Love and Heartbreak
Love is ever changing. It can make seconds can feel like hours, and hours like seconds. This fleeting sentiment is at times equally morose and euphoric. When in a relationship, all of the feelings surrounding it are exponentially magnified, and after it ends, the despair of heartbreak rushes in like a bullet. Amber Tamblyn’s emotions are no different. In “With Lots of Salt Water and Imagination,” she uses the medium of poetry to depict a seemingly insecure and youthful relationship. Her fascinating wordplay takes the listener on a journey through the highs and lows of love. This, along with her masterful utilization of poetic tools such as metaphor, allows her to portray her relationship in a manner that not
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only entices, but consumes the audience. Through her distinctive usage of metaphor, and bittersweet tone, Amber Tamblyn adroitly portrays the contrasting emotions of a youthful relationship. Love is perhaps the most potent emotion.
It enters every aspect of one’s life, and once there, it becomes omnipresent. Though her poem, Amber Tamblyn conveys this in a myriad of ways, such as in metaphor. In “With Lots of Salt Water and Imagination,” love is described as a sandcastle, a “dream structure,” laden with “balconies and towers” (1, 4). This overarching comparison is a testament to the strength and immense force of love within the poem, as the feeling is powerful enough to be described as a fortress. Moreover, the metaphor depicts the care and compassion necessary to build a lasting relationship. When the sandcastle is described as having “an hommage to your courage,” Amber Tamblyn is stating that she truly cares for and respects her lover, enough to describe herself as paying him homage (8). This makes the emotional blow significantly more devastating when it comes to an end, because of her significant investment in the relationship. It also manifests the strength of her love, as it shows she is willing to diminish her pride by paying respect to his courage. Furthermore, she exhibits great self-sacrifice when she gives him her “buckets and shovels” in order to help build the metaphorical sandcastle (12). It draws a parallel to reality, where she presumably would do almost anything for the benefit of her
relationship. In order to better communicate the acute emotions of her relationship, Amber Tamblyn utilizes a bittersweet and mournful tone. This tone amplifies the innate conflict that accompanies an unstable relationship, which magnifies the occasionally contradictory set of emotions the protagonist is experiencing. When she indicates that the sandcastle is built of “sand and sentiment,” she conveys that its foundation is not very strong as a sentiment is something without deep substance or conviction. This usage of words presents the tone as filled with mournful regret, for it gives the feeling that she knew the relationship was going to fail before its conception. Moreover, Amber Tamblyn makes various allusions to additional pain and heartbreak throughout the poem, such as when she references “spirits,” which one may take to mean alcohol (18). This allows for the listener to experience a fuller breadth of emotion. When the protagonist and her lover “ignore low tide” and the dangers that come with it, it gives off the notion of reckless abandon, as it seems that they carelessly ignore potential troubles within their relationship (18). This serves to enhance the bittersweet tone, as she acknowledges that her love, while still robust, is deeply flawed and thus easily susceptible to heartbreak. This is visible in her word choice and the atmosphere of the poem, giving off the impression that she is deeply, and perhaps subconsciously unhappy in the relationship, which leaves the tone with a dolorous tinge. Overall, through meticulous word choice and seamless allusions, Amber Tamblyn gives her poem an ambivalent tone that fills the listener with a great sense of something close to regret. Another facet of the poem that heightens its warring emotions is its youthful atmosphere. Both the protagonist and her lover act like youths, partaking in seemingly puerile activities such as building sandcastles. Their childishness serves to highlight their emotional highs and lows. When they laugh “uncontrollably,” like two adolescents, it brings out the pure joy in what seems like their love for one another (15.) This only serves to further contrast from the relationship’s ending, when their blithely youthfulness, which is brought upon by love, disappears. It makes what is left of the protagonist’s love seem even bleaker and more harrowing. Their juvenility is further augmented by the poem’s beach setting. The fact that they are at a place widely populated by young people makes them seem more youthful and vivacious themselves. Furthermore, when the couple turn “tossed candy wrappers into thrones,” it is evident that there are rather youthful connotations within the poem, as children are generally thought to carelessly consume sweets (16). However this is shown to strengthen their relationship as the wrappers are turned “into thrones,” which may mean that the evident childishness of the relationship enhances and strengthens it (16). Lastly, the poet utilizes juxtaposition and rhyme in order to depict the love and sadness the protagonist feels with regards to her relationship. When the two lovers kiss “above sand crabs cussing at our nestling kneecaps,” the pleasure of the kiss juxtaposes the apparent pain that could be derived from sand crabs (17). The usage of this specific contrast exemplifies how starkly different the emotions felt within the relationship are. Moreover, the third stanza is comprised of several words that rhyme: I carved an homage to your courage in the form of a drawbridge so your isolation periods would always have a form of leverage. (8-11) The usage of these rhyming words of accentuates the youthfulness of the poem, and conveys the childlike happiness that the protagonist feels with her lover. In doing this, it contrasts the more mature and less playful emotion of heartbreak with the youthful emotion of love, heightening the severity of both of the feelings. In summation, Amber Tamblyn’s poem, “With Lots of Salt Water and Imagination” is about an apparently perfervid relationship with a weak foundation. As a result of this, the once strong love ends in heartbreak. This bittersweet journey is made all the more fascinating through Amber’s masterful utilization of the poetic devices of metaphor, tone, juxtaposition, allusion, and connotation. Being in love is no simple task, it takes hard work and effort, as demonstrated through the poem. However, in this case, is not enough, for it does not save Amber’s love for her boyfriend from “sinking into the shells” to be forgotten by the world (19). Just as she said, it may have been better to keep her hands to herself.
In, A Place Where the Sea Remembers, several events take place to describe the little city of Santiago, Mexico. This town is just south of the border by El Paso, Texas. The book focuses around a lady known as the Remedios. She is a very old healer that helps people with their problems of love, hate, etc. She is the "good" in the book, whereas El Brujo, the warlock, is the bad man in the book. This book's other strong point is that it has several short narratives that focus on one, or a few citizens of Santiago. A few examples are, Candelario (the salad maker), Marta (16 year old that's pregnant), Fulgencio (the photographer that loses all of his equipment) and Don Justo Flores (left his wife and kids and now it haunts him when one of his daughters die). In these stories, these people go threw hardships and ordeals that teach us, the readers, how to or not to deal with life when it isn't looking UP.
Kim Addonizio’s “First Poem for You” portrays a speaker who contemplates the state of their romantic relationship though reflections of their partner’s tattoos. Addressing their partner, the speaker ambivalence towards the merits of the relationship, the speaker unhappily remains with their partner. Through the usage of contrasting visual and kinesthetic imagery, the speaker revels the reasons of their inability to embrace the relationship and showcases the extent of their paralysis. Exploring this theme, the poem discusses how inner conflicts can be powerful paralyzers.
The speaker’s rocky encounter with her ex-lover is captured through personification, diction, and tone. Overall, the poem recaps the inner conflicts that the speak endures while speaking to her ex-lover. She ponders through stages of the past and present. Memories of how they were together and the present and how she feels about him. Never once did she broadcast her emotions towards him, demonstrating the strong facade on the outside, but the crumbling structure on the inside.
“Love is like the sea. It's a moving thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from the shore it meets, and it's different with every shore.” The main character in Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie Crawford, possesses a seemingly unquenchable thirst for affection, and does not rest until she finds the man who is able to offer her the love she desires and believes to deserve. Janie defines love as a fluid force that is different with every man, and transforms with changing circumstances. Janie does not care to be wealthy, or to have high social standing; she wishes to be submerged in a sea of tenderness and to swim through waters of passion, and to be caressed by captivating waves of lust. Her idealistic conception of love and the corresponding desire for it developed from her sixteen-year-old obsession with a bee pollinating a pear blossom in the back yard of her grandmother’s house.
Imagine that it's winter and cold outside. There's nervous electricity around you, and love is a new and exciting experience. In your heart you feel warmth you've never known before. This is the moment Gary Soto captures in his poem "Oranges". The feeling and power of adolescent love is created using tone, contrasting imagery, and symbolism.
As humans, the journey through life means forming emotional attachments to each other. The first type of attachment we form is with our family. Eventually, people grow older and form emotional attachments to individuals outside the family, as friends. Then later in life, the possibility of developing romantic relationships can arise. However, each person at some point must face the reality that the people they have bonded with will depart this world. Similarly, one must also deal with the new assortment of emotions that follow after a passing or separation. In Lydia Davis’s poem “Head, Heart”, she depicts a conversation between a head and a grief-stricken heart, which represents the internal conflict between logic and emotion following a separation
“Love is pure, love is painful, love is sweet and love is dreadful” (“20 Interesting Facts”). Love has both up’s and down’s. How people prepare and react to love’s down will determine the outcomes. Poets throughout history have had difficulties with love, and Edgar Allan Poe, author of “For Annie,” and Rick Springfield, songwriter for “Jessie’s Girl,” are no exception. Poe and Springfield’s approaches on love are like peanut butter and jelly, they can go together, but do not mix. While Poe is the fault of his disconnection from love, Springfield has no control over his love life.
Parker uses the relationship between two true lovers to portray the strength one grasps when overcoming obstacles to hold onto true love. Parker begins the poem with a peaceful tone. This tone is created through the images of the “birds” and the “lilacs”, thus revealing that nature enhances a buildup of hope and strength within a character. The blending of the natural beauty of both birds and flowers
I personally loved everything that this poem stood for. I liked that this poem had two average people at its center. They were not young or insanely beautiful, but they still showed how amazing love can be and how love goes beyond everything. When it comes down to it love has no gender, age, race, or time it is just about humans loving other humans. In this week’s chapter it is discussed how romance itself has a huge cultural impact and this poem definitely connects with this idea. This poem also follows the cliche of love. The way that love is blinding and will conquer all is presented in a real and believable way, but then it can also be considered unrelatable for some because how romance is set up to be and how high the standards are for true love. Furthermore, I like the idea of love going beyond age, beauty, and time but realistically for most people they will never experience a love so intense. People can though understand how what is portrayed in the media is not how everyone experiences love and that people who differ from this unrealistic standard can still be in love in their own intense beautiful way.
As though their adulterous tryst were timed with the weather, their forbidden lust filled afternoon was over just as the storm was moving on. Although basking in the after-glow, neither dared to sleep. “The rain was over; and the sun was turning the glistening green world into a palace of gems.” Their passion was as fierce as the crashing torrents of the rain outside and then the after-glow from both being mutually satiated was like the sun coming back out.
Love has the power to do anything. Love can heal and love can hurt. Love is something that is indescribable and difficult to understand. Love is a feeling that cannot be accurately expressed by a word. In the poem “The Rain” by Robert Creeley, the experience of love is painted and explored through a metaphor. The speaker in the poem compares love to rain and he explains how he wants love to be like rain. Love is a beautiful concept and through the abstract comparison to rain a person is assisted in developing a concrete understanding of what love is. True beauty is illuminated by true love and vice versa. In other words, the beauty of love and all that it entails is something true.
Anton Chekhov and Ernest Hemingway both convey their ideas of love in their respective stories The Lady with the Pet Dog and Hills like White Elephants in different ways. However, their ideas are quite varying, and may be interpreted differently by each individual reader. In their own, unique way, both Chekhov and Hemingway evince what is; and what is not love. Upon proper contemplation, one may observe that Hemingway, although not stating explicitly what love is; the genius found in his story is that he gives a very robust example of what may be mistaken as love, although not being true love. On the other hand, Chekhov exposes love as a frame of mind that may only be achieved upon making the acquaintance of the “right person,” and not as an ideal that one may palpate at one instance, and at the another instance one may cease to feel; upon simple and conscious command of the brain. I agree with Hemingway’s view on love because it goes straight to the point of revealing some misconceptions of love.
.... With the correct sum, the loud and rushing “giant waterfalls” that characterized the parent-child relationship in the first stanza are now quiet “streams” and “sweet pools”. In addition, the “old metal cup…that nobody could break” is representative of their unbreakable family bond of love. Through moments of chaos and divergence, this loving bond prevails. (Nye, Naomi Shihab)
This poem has captured a moment in time of a dynamic, tentative, and uncomfortable relationship as it is evolving. The author, having shared her thoughts, concerns, and opinion of the other party's unchanging definition of the relationship, must surely have gone on to somehow reconcile the situation to her own satisfaction. She relishes the work entailed in changing either of them, perhaps.
Love is significant in people’s lives. Many forms of love are in their relationships with others, whether it is romantic, platonic, sexual or a mixture of all the above. When someone experiences love intensely for the first time, the feeling can send them into a euphoric shock. A natural concept that young lovers feel is that their relationships are transparent and their love is unconditional. However, Simon Mawer points out that budding relationships progress to eventual collapse due to sexual frustration and a want to avoid confrontation, consequently leading to the questioning of an existence of any emotional connection whatsoever. In the novel The Glass Room, Mawer introduces multiple characters with different relationships with one another.