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Representation of love in poetry
Explain the theme of love in poetry
Explain the theme of love in poetry
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Recommended: Representation of love in poetry
The online Oxford Dictionary states that a theorem is a “general proposition not self-evident but proved by a chain of reasoning; a truth established by means of accepted truths” (OUP). Kate Camp’s poem Unfinished Love Theorem explores the various facets of love, in order to formulate a theory about it. The poem takes the reader on a journey through these discrete theories in an attempt to prove what love is. That it is an ‘unfinished’ theory suggests love is a complex emotion and therefore hard to define.
The poem is in free form and divided into five stanzas of unequal length. Weaving through the poem is a series of metaphors, these link physical aspects of life to abstract ideas regarding love. The essence of these changing metaphors remains the same: love is a journey, a journey of
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Now the speaker is experiencing love, they are “in amongst it” (16) and their view has changed. No longer is love irregular and uneven, now it has steadied and settled into lines. The trick is to work out the direction of these lines and find a pathway through the maze of possibilities. The boat has become a train and the journey to find love is a map, going in all directions. That it is “underground … hidden” (17) implies it is still not easy to find or to follow. Like the stars of stanza three, we have to learn to read the signs. The lack of a “scale” (18) confirms the immeasurability of love and echoes the mathematical theorem this poem hopes to define. Until now, the speaker has focussed on their own concept of love and, as in the previous stanzas, there is a shift in ideas in the second part of the stanza. The focus moves away from the speaker to include everyone and the way love is a part of every facet of life. It takes us to work, it takes us out in the evenings and it takes us home to our beds. These bedrooms are “rumpled” (21), love has taken on a physicality, and it is becoming a more concrete concept for the
This essay is anchored on the goal of looking closer and scrutinizing the said poem. It is divided into subheadings for the discussion of the analysis of each of the poem’s stanzas.
The poem is a combination of beauty and poignancy. It is a discovery in a trajectory path of rise and fall of human values and modernity. She is a sole traveler, a traveler apart in a literary romp afresh, tracing the thinning line of time and action.
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.
Both poems represent the despairs and failures of the love they hone for their beloved, with brings a touch of sadness to the poems. From this the reader can feel almost sympathetic to the unrequited lovers, and gain an understanding of the perils and repercussions of love.
The first three stanzas of the poem focus on the content of the relationship and we see the content of it. However, there is a change. The sixth and seventh stanzas describe an event and its consequences.
Love can come at unexpected times, through current situations or through memories, and they will always have that permanent effect on us, just like a tattoo. Because of strange stanza breaks, unusual imagery, and elongated punctuation, the reader can determine the deeper meaning of the poem. The two-lined stanzas signify short-lived loves, and the stanza breaks depict the break-ups and passing of loved ones. The imagery of skulls and the metaphor that love is a tattoo shows that love never deteriorates. And lastly, the poem is only two sentences long, so this shows the fluidity and never ending power of love. Too often people take advantage of love, but what they aren’t aware of is that their experiences with each and every person they have loved tattoo their mind to make them into who they are, much like a tattoo permanently inks one’s skin to commemorate a
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.
“Love Poem With Toast” by Miller Williams introduces the effect our desires have in our daily lives in order to “move, as we call it, forward” (11). Miller Williams also conveys this message accompanied with a darker meaning; though these desires make up a large part of our lives, in the end none of it will matter because we leave the world the same way we enter it, with nothing. Despite this message being carried out, it is still a love poem at the surface, but it is not about a person confessing their love, rather pretending to love, and continuing to live with this self-conflict about choosing to be in a frigid relationship over not being in one at all. It is interesting how Miller rhythmically categorizes his message throughout the poem;
“Flung leagues of roaring foam into the gorge below us, as far as the eye could see.” By using hyperbole, the author is lead the reader to the overall idea of the poem. “Cyrano de Bergerac” and “O’were I Loved as I desire to be”, use these devices to demonstrate the main theme of love isn’t as easy as it seems. The authors are able to create such emotional works by incorporating metaphors and other literary devices.
Both, the poem “Reluctance” by Robert Frost and “Time Does Not Bring Relief” by Edna St. Vincent Millay, revolved around the theme of lost love. Each poet used a similar array of poetic devices to express this theme. Visual imagery was one of the illustrative poetic devices used in the compositions. Another poetic device incorporated by both poets in order to convey the mood of the poems was personification. And by the same token, metaphors were also used to help express the gist of both poems. Ergo, similar poetic devices were used in both poems to communicate the theme of grieving the loss of a loved one.
Millay uses romantic language. That is evident in the first line, "Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink". The romantic aspect of love is shown in the language of this poem. The poem is not directly about two lovers. It is more indirect, this is what two lovers may face. Her language is picturesque. "Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink / And rise and sink and rise and sink again;" It is as if the poem was showing a picture of a man in the sea that is struggling to survive and throughout the course of bobbing up and down he continues to see a pole or paddle, but he just can't reach it. There are more ideas that can be pictured easily throughout the poem, because of the language that Millay uses. "Love can no fill the thickened lung with breath, / Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;" These lines create an interesting picture in your mind.
The overall themes of this poem are beauty, love, and destiny. The speaker constantly discusses beautiful things and how they can help us. Love can be felt throughout the entire poem. In the first stanza, the speaker verbalizes how he “came with love of the race.” He also expresses love for the beautiful things around him. The theme destiny can be seen in the third stanza when the speaker talks about staying on course. It can also be identified in the last stanza when he describes something inevitable that was about to
The poem's diction immerses the reader into the speaker's fantasy-like realm of love shared with his bride. He begins the poem with the first two lines, "It was many and many a year ago, / In a kingdom by the sea," much like the "once upon a time, in a faraway land" of fairytales. The couple lived with no other thought than to love one another and "loved with a love that was more than love" (9).
The journey of self-discovery and individuality forms one’s personal power which in turn can become powerlessness due to dominant physical forces. The poems
The use of the word “heart” emphasises this passion as the heart is considered the most important organ and so demonstrates how his passion (the “summer” in the sentence) is alive. Within these three poems, the use of nature as a mechanism impacted the poems, allowing them to convey meanings in an ambiguous sense yet still get across the general meaning of the poem.