The Ache Of Marriage By Denise Levorthov Summary

Denise Levertov tries to explain the pain a marriage may experience in her poem, “The Ache of Marriage”. This pain, she claims, affects not only emotionally but physically as well. Levertov describes this pain as if the reader were reading her thoughts. Levertov's uses a non-conventional form that allows the central theme of pain that lies within a marriage and the overcoming that pain jumps straight off from the page. Levertov cleverly separates the poem into two parts. On one hand, Levertov describes the difficulty of making a marriage last. She expresses how a marriage can ache and hurt, or “throb”, at times. On the other hand, Levertov states that a happy and content marriage is the ultimate goal. She also describes that the trial and tribulations a marriage may encounter can prove to be worthy. Through her words, marriage is personified as an actual human being. Marriage is a being, which hurts in the "thigh and tongue" (2). The author’s clever use of personification

She cleverly makes an allusion to the famous Noah's ark by writing, "two by two in the ark of" (12). Noah's ark symbolizes the survival and faith in our creator. This allows the reader to make a connection that one another needs to have faith to keep a marriage alive. This is a good use of imagery in the poem and gives it a deeper meaning than what the words may appear as at first. Levertov also uses a different imagery in lines 10-11. She writes, "It is leviathan and we in its belly looking for joy, some joy not to be known outside it" (10-11). The comparison of a sacred agreement to a leviathan results in a vivid image. Because pain is compared to a leviathan, which is an gigantic, monster-like creature, at times it may seem like it is unconquerable. Levertov says that pain is like a monster, within which the journey for joy resumes. There is no meaning of happiness because the marriage revolves around