Although I would love to rally against all things Valentine's Day, I find that I just can't. Who can? The underlying premise of the holiday is to celebrate love. To ignore the importance of love in our lives is like ignoring the importance of oxygen. It is vital. But, don't get me wrong here. I certainly am not arguing for the necessity for every human being to envelope themselves in a relationship or coupling of some kind. What I am arguing for is the idea that the love of something, anything, is what makes us wake up in the morning. Whether that love be for another human being, a pet, a hobby, or an idea, it is necessary.
Since love is a ubiquitous emotion throughout the course of humanity it is no surprise that it is also a common theme within literature. Countless love stories and poems have been written over the centuries. Some focus on the quest for love, some on the quest far, far away from love. Regardless of the context, the nebulous idea that we call love has forever baffled and interested humans - and I predict that it forever will.
For this week I would like you to read some of my favorite poems about love. They are certainly not all positive portrayals of love, but they do represent a small sample of the variety of opinions that are out there about the topic. For your comment, choose one or two of the poems and create a short analysis of the poem. If you are unsure of how to approach poetry analysis, click here to get some tips.
[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in] by e.e. cummings
How Do I Love Thee? by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
When You Are Old by William Butler Yeats
The Kiss by Stephen Dunn
Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold
Dover Bitch by Anthony Hecht
18 comments:
As the title of this blog states, "Love is in the Air", it truly makes me think of how it literally is! We live for love and the love for something or someone, otherwise we would'nt live at all. The poems given to us were all describing different types of love and how love is affected throughout the ages. The two poems I chose to develop upon are, "When you are Old" and "How do I love thee?"
"How do I love Thee?" is a simple love poem that most poets write. The poem is basically just stating the love a person can have for another and the extent of how far they are willing to go with this love. "I love thee with the breath,smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death."
"When you are Old" actually really caught my attention. This poem is not ordinary and it uses old love that still hangs on strong till this day. W.B Yeats states, " But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, and loved the sorrows of your pilgrim face.", this sentence spoke to me. Not many people or writers describe love as "loving your sorrows" or "loving the pildrim in your soul", after contemplating what this meant, the title gave it away. W.B Yates is speaking about old love, love so pure that it send shivers down your spine and your heart fills with longing for that special feeling of true and majestic love.
- In the poem "Dover Beach" by Matthew Arnold he starts by painting a beautiful scenery as he looks at the seashore. One can infer that he is speaking to his loved one from the line, "Come to the window, sweet is the night air," but also to society through the message he is trying to give the reader. Through out his poem a struggle is evident; he notes a sad reality surrounding him.
- In the lines, "But now I only hear, its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar," Arnold is referring to faith. By using this personification he is implying that people have lost their faith. In the last stanza he says, "Let us be true to one another!" What he wants us to absorb from this line and the poem as a whole is that people need to regain their "sea of faith" because they seem to be hopeless in this state of confusion.
The poem [i carry your heart with me(i carry it in] by E.E. Cummings is in my opinion, the most beautiful poem out of the six. It shows an inseparable bond between the speaker and the lover when he states "i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)i am never without it(anywhere i go you go,my dear...)" This portion of the first stanza portrays a bond that is so intimate it is almost as if they are one; their hearts are intertwined. The poem has a common motif of the lovers being together, always. In the poem, Cummings writes "(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)" this analogy explains how the tree of life, constructed of basic things, "grows" so tall that our soul can't grasp it nor can our mind, the source of thought, comtemplate it.
In th poem Cummings depicts a deep feeling of profound love and passion.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "How Do I Love Thee?" potrayed intense feelings of love, as shown in the line "I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach, when feeling out of sight". Here Browning uses spatial metaphors to show the extent of her love. Also, when Browning says "...if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.", she shows faith in persisting her devotion to her lover, even after passing away. Brownings portrays her theme of love so intensely that reader can feel the devotion in the relationship between her and her lover.
Melissa M. Period 3
The poem that I felt spoke to me was [i carry your heart with me(i carry it in] by E.E. Cummings.
The poem is mostly about how the narrator is so in love with his beloved that he feels as if "he carries her heart in his". He also talks of his beloved and how he doesn't want no fate nor world, hence "you are my fate and you are my world."
The poem mostly tells about two people coming together and spending their time together for the whole lifetime. This poem was most likely written from a lovers point of view for people who understand love and know the meaning of it.
JUAN GARCIA
P3
I carry it in my heart is a very well written poem. The author is writing that wherever she goes, the person she loves is always with her. She is showing how much she cares about this person and that she will always be in her heart. She says that the person is her everything and he is the most important person to her. She says that the biggest secret is that she carries him in her heart. This author expresses love and care to the person.
He was talking about how special the kiss was. He wrote about how she had kissed perfectly and it sends shivers down his body. He was saying that music was playing on its own because it was really special and it was a one-of-a-kind moment. He was saying that the person giving him the kiss was smart because she knew exactly where to kiss him.
In the poem "How Do I Love Thee" it is showing the immense love a person has for another. Elizabeth Barrett Browning uses metaphors to show how much love the speaker has for their partner "I love thee freely, as men strive for right. I love thee purely, as they turn from praise."
Browning wants to set a romantic tone to this particular piece. She uses romantic writing to set the scenery of the poem. You could tell by reading this piece that the speaker has deep feelings. In the first stanza, "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach,..." the author already shows that the speaker has all sorts of "ways" to love another. It shows how romantic the poem is.
ALLAN NUDELMAN
In the poem "How Do I Love Thee?", Elizabeth Barrett Browining is trying to explain all the ways that she loves a special someone. She uses anaphora with the words "I love thee" to emphasize that there are many different ways of loving a person. Browning uses many similes in her verses that compare the way a human can love something or someone to other things in the world that sound a little exaggerated. For example, she says "I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life". This is one simile that represents the amount of love she has for someone. Although this seems a little hyperbolic, it is actually true that in real life someone can feel so much for a person that it can be compared to something like "breath". Apart from creating a poem that makes sense and sends the message she was trying to make, browning managed to make the verses rhyme.
Stephen Dunn's title "The Kiss" is a perfect description of the poem. From the first, strong line of the poem, we know that Stephen was writing to voice his love and story.
He starts out by stating how he has always yearned for love, and how he knew when he found it just by the kiss. Dunn uses descriptive words and imagery about his sensations from head to toes, and the music playing, similarly to fireworks, or love at first kiss. Comparing his woman to others and how he couldn't settle for less shows us how much she really means to him. The words that she spoke and her charismatic love had him mesmerized and whipped by her love and falling at her feet.
Dunn also uses a variety of figures of speech. One that he uses is metaphors. He says "There was hardly any air." implying that their first kiss was so strong, his lungs were tight and his heart skipped beats, making it hard to breathe. Another figure of speech he uses slightly is synechdoches. He says, "...the right thing at the right time,". The word 'thing' stands for his body (lips). Dunn uses personification by saying, "...the wisest tongue" and "it's the good, defining itself." Obviously, a tongue cannot be wise, and 'good' cannot define itself. His use of these figures of speech adds voice and imagery to this poem.
Love is something as you said, vital. We live for love and live to be loved as well. Love doesn't necessarily have to be between two people, there is also the love shared between a family or the love you have for you favorite team or sport. Without love, we would be nothing, life on a day to day basis would be so monotonous that there would be no point in living. True love is something everyone seeks out but few have and those who have it realize how special it is.
The poems I chose were "How do I love thee?" and "[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]" These to poems stood out to me out of all of them because the authors are so expressive of their feelings. In How do I love thee? Barrett is writing about how much she loves this person in her life. She is basically saying that she will do anything for this person and that only she knows how much she loves him/her. I like this poem because of the way its presented she could've just said I love you so much but instead she decides to prove her love in a poetic manner and show examples of how much she truly loves the person.
The poem [I carry your heart with me(I carry it in] by e.e cummings is the best poem in this group. He is describing the inseparable bond between him and the person he loves. When he says I carry your heart with me he means that he is always thinking about this person and the impact that he/she is making on his life. Cumming's is in love with this person and can't describe his love for her any other way then just poetry.
In "The Kiss" by Stephen Dunn, he writes about someone that seems desperate to have somebody to love him. Since the character hasn't had anybody to touch his lips in a very long time he feels this great since of pleasure run down his body from his fingertips down to his toes. Stephen Dunn gets to the point where the character starts to feel and taste her tongue. Maybe the author was desperate to find love himself, so he expressed his feelings through this poem.
"How do I love Thee?" can be a strong poem based on how people decide to look at it. People should love there loved ones with all their heart and soul, as the poem states. No one should be with someone just to say "I love you" but it isn't true. The feelings have to be there for that person.
Stephen Dunn's poem "The Kiss" is an image most teenagers can relate to. At least half of motion films today have this "kiss" Dunn vividly drives into our brains. The motion picture Spiderman, with Tobey Maguire, I believe is the perfect example on how to describe this desire of touching lips. When Mary Jane kisses Spiderman a.k.a Peter Parker, she feels fluttered but passionate at the same time. It definitely shows her curiousity as to who this mystery superhero could be. This glow of emotion represents this "tingling" sense we receive throughout the body after pressing our lips onto another person.
E.E. Cummings nailed the accurate definition of love flawlessly. He translates that even if you aren't physically beside your one true love, their essence roams wherever you journey to. Even when separated for many months, the loving bond blooms stronger until it is like a full-grown red rose. I also believe Cummings tries to depict into our minds that even through rough struggles, love will always be there to assist us in our faults and support us no matter what happens. Men or women who have loved ones in the Army or any organizations regarding soldiers in combat know exactly this type of love and bare with the uncertainty that their special somebody may never return; it's their hope and love that allows them to remain positive. You never know if you're are truly someone's world...
The kiss is a very well written poem by Stephen Dunn. It is quite a short poem but it is still very appealing. He is talking about his one true love and how when you meet your one true love anything they do to you is perfect. He has been waiting for so long till he has finally found her. He is dedicating this whole poem to his one true love, he says How many years "I must have yearned for someone’s lips against mind." I think when he says this he is saying that he has waited for so long for a kiss that would be the one he would cherish forever. He is truly deeply in love with whom ever he wrote this poem about. James Sidebottom p3
The first poem that I choose is the “When you are Old” by W. B. Yeats. This poem is evidently a loved themed and romantic genre. In more detail, it has a few metonymies, synecdoche, and a little bit of irony. For instance, one example of metonymy in the poem is” changing face” means when your physical appearance changes. One example of synecdoche is when it stated” loved your beauty with love false or true” which is more defined as loving “you” and “your beauty” with true love or just saying he loves it. The ironic part was when it said” How many loved your moments of glad grace” but that person would later on have “love fled” from them.
The secondary poem that I choose is the” The kiss” by Stephen Dunn. This one too is a love theme and a romantic genre but with a happier ending. This poem included metonymy, synecdoche, and personification. A metonymy, in this poem will include the words pheromones and oracle. Pheromones are a certain reaction from a certain act, and an oracle is more like a smart/wise opinion. An example of a synecdoche, is when it states” that sends messages to toes and fingertips” which can be compared to having a chill run down my spine. A personification that is revealed in the poem is the when it says” Oracle got into a Greek’s ear”, which can stand for have the ability to understand. As well as, when it says “the wisest tongue.” This can be interrupted as giving the tongue, wisdom.
The poems that i have chosen to do aqn analysis on are,"The kiss" and "When your're old." The poem, "The Kiss" was confusing to me in the beginning. But, as i re-read i made the assumption that the author was talking about the fact that a man has been yearinig for the affection of a female or years and feels a sense of ecstacy everytime their lips touch. I made the inference that the people are madley in love which is why they married as soon as they could.
The other poem,"when you're old
", make me think that the poet wrote it to make us see that love has no age and anyone can love. It describes the love between a woman and a man who loves her for her "pilgrimage." The line,"And his face amid a crowd of stars" led me to believe he had died and represents that love goes on forever.
How do I love Thee? Well, there are many ways to love someone, and it depends on how much love means to you. This poem shows that love comes in different measures. Who is to say one is greater than another? I do not believe so. Is an ounce greater than a teaspoon? Love comes in many different forms, and people have different ways of showing it. Although this poem was short, it proved strong in showing us what love is like.
Cory Leschel P3 ((:
Alex Hebert
E.E. Cummings' poem [I carry your heart with me(I carry it in]is the poem that I chose because I believe that it has the most substantial value to all of us. I don't think that he is trying to portray a story, but rather an idea. The idea that everyone knows what love is. and I truely believe that everyone can relate something in their life to this poem whether it's a family memeber, a friend or something that you just love. I like this poem more than the others because it explains the meaning or love rather than the effects of it. E.E. Cummings is trying to say that no matter what happens i will always love you, but i also think that everyone over complicates love. We've been givin the impression that it is near impossible to define love when in real life we have all experienced love, it's what keeps us going. I believe that love is as simplistic as putting on your socks before your shoes, it just happens without even having to think twice about it.
"When You are Old", really made me contemplate on the excessive word called, love. This poem very much speaks the truth, we all will(get) old and ponder on the life we had. On how passionate our lives were and how exhilarating the moments filled with love were. How they made us smile or biggest smile, and feel tingly throughout every vein in our body.
We will also reflect on the not-so-good times, when we cried like small children, sniffing and taking breathes as though they were our last. All because of one person we once loved or still love.
Just like Yeats writes, " How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face."
"I carry your heart with me(i carry it in)", also intrigued and interested me because it made me realize how caught up in love, and obsessed people can become. Many people sacrifice everything for the one person they love. I find Cummings' writing, to be very warm, sincere, and innocent. For instance, "I fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you", shows that he has no doubt in his mind that everything will work out perfectly. For this reason, this poem make me smile.
There is something to be said about how love can affect mankind. Man can either ignore it completely, barely let it in, or let it define him. In the poem Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold, he showcases how complex human emotions can truely be. Everything is as complex you make it, and most anything can be cut down into a simple yes, or no. Therefore, when it comes to love, i disagree. Theres so much love in this world, yet society has found reasons to push it out of their lives. What is love anyway? Love is the feeling you get when you see past any negatives, and all their is, is good. Love was never meant to be limited as so many peope see it, but to be spread. In the mind, love is either present or absent. It can be perceived as an idea, or a way of life. For example, you can love a girlfirend, a brother, a friend, and act totally different with each person. But the love is the same. If the world learned to love, and see things for the better, maybe we could give peace that last chance it so desperately needs.
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