An Analysis of To Have without Holding by Marge Piercy

In the first stanza, the narrator explains that the feeling of love can be felt towards more than one person, but with each love comes an ending of grief. The end of love can end with tears, but nobody can escape their heart’s journey to find their soul mate. The second stanza mentions the need to hold onto the feeling of love between two people. The narrator says that the two loves searched for a place “where sorrows

This contrasts sharply to the attitudes portrayed in ‘A kind of love some say’. The last stanza of the poem shows the persona talking about emotional pain, ‘Sadists will not learn that Love, by nature, exacts a pain, Unequalled on the rack. This shows us that the emotional pain of love can be worse than the actual physical pain described in the poem. This shows the

In stanza 12, she tells us that he has “bit her pretty red heart in two.” Next, she states that he died when she was ten, and when she was twenty years old, she attempted suicide - “…I tried to die, to get back back back to you.” In stanza 13 is where she starts talking about her husband. She says that instead of dying, her friends “stuck her together with glue,” and since she could not die to get back to her father, she would marry someone who was similar.

The speaker uses words such as “louring” (line 2), “deep deceit” (line 8), “grievous” (line 11) and “bale” (line 140. All of these words have sorrowful and despairing meanings to them which gives the whole poem an unhappy tone. The third and fourth lines discus that the speaker cannot even look at the beautiful face, which appears to grow more attractive daily, of the woman he loves. Moreover, the couplet tells the readers that the sorrow in the speaker’s eyes is there because of the pain he has felt due to his faulty relationship. The mouse that “lies aloof for fear of more mishap” (line 7) shows the misery felt by the speaker by using the words “aloof” and “mishap”. “Aloof” means to be stand-offish or reserved, which the speaker is because if he gets too close, he will be hurt again. “Mishap” means disaster or unfortune which altogether sounds miserable. Had the speaker used diction that was lighter or less depressed, the reader truly would not understand the misery the speaker has went through. The miserable diction depicts the deep wounds the speaker received from his love, shedding light to how much he really loved her and how bad she really hurt

The poem’s structure as a sonnet allows the speaker’s feelings of distrust and heartache to gradually manifest themselves as the poem’s plot progresses. Each quatrain develops and intensifies the speaker’s misery, giving the reader a deeper insight into his convoluted emotions. In the first quatrain, the speaker advises his former partner to not be surprised when she “see[s] him holding [his] louring head so low” (2). His refusal to look at her not only highlights his unhappiness but also establishes the gloomy tone of the poem. The speaker then uses the second and third quatrains to justify his remoteness; he explains how he feels betrayed by her and reveals how his distrust has led him

Through the use of poetic devices such as repetition or alliteration, the author originally describes what love is not capable of providing and defines love as unnecessary but by the end of the poem, the author reveals that love has some value.

In stanza four the pronoun “you” is introduce. We assume its Collin prior relationship, as its only stanza that doesn’t contains Collin pet analogy and first evidence contributing to the theme. The metaphor shift to abstract when Collin deny her worthiness and what she meant to his life. But, as he subtracted himself to the “combination”, he was able to discover her value rather measuring his spouse love and intimacy. Repetitions occur, such as “awkward and bewildering” to represent the time when his spouse was companion to him, but he couldn’t reciprocate those same nurturing feelings back to her. In addition, his spouse “held” him more than he ever did. He regrets it now when he is holding his dog but the dog is incapable to measure that same actions and words because of law of nature. The last stanza line, “..now we are both lost in strange and distant neighborhood.”, is another metaphor reference the way a lost dog might feel to his lost love that can’t ever be the same

In this poetic sequence, two un-named characters represent the darker side of modern love. The women “wept with waking eyes” (line 1) because she’s unhappy and miserable in her marriage. Her despair is also obvious in line three, when her “low sobs shook their common bed,” the word “common” is used to show that their bed isn’t a special place for them, it’s the place where they both just sleep. The anonymous woman “lay stone-still,” as if to not wake her husband, this metaphor

Love tends to be the topic of many poetic literary works, whether it be the joys that come with it or the pains suffered because of it, but what can be made of the love that results in both? In the poem, “For He Looked Not upon Her,” George Gascoigne already makes that message clear through his title: sometimes, there is reason not to desire what we can not help but long for. When his audience reads the work, they are meant to discover that reason behind why “He” would not look upon “Her”. Through the speaker’s form, diction, and imagery that he utilizes in the poem, it becomes clear that his tone towards love is wary, yet also conflictingly longing.

The following statements provide a strong back for how the writer is trying to invoke the readers, what all love can't do and how useless it can be. Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain; Love is not everything. It is not meat that we can eat, it cannot be used to quench thirst, nor can it provide a shelter on a heavy rain. All the physical needs we have, and the ones we need to survive, are put in contrast to the emotional need of love, which it clearly outweighs when it comes to the sustenance of life. She is

The culminating point of the speaker's resentment comes within the last four lines of the stanza, and this is where we see the true intentions of the speaker. "What I will say I will not tell thee now, / Lest that preserve thee..." (14-15). After calling his mistress a "poor aspen wretch" and a "feigned vestal", he insists on saving the best for last. He would rather keep her in this transparent world and let her suffer what he will say. "...And since my love is spent" (15). This seems like a debatable statement, if his love is spent than why hold back words that may hurt the lost lover even more. For that matter why write about her at all since he has let it go? He claims he no longer loves her and therefore no longer desires her love. But because the threat is so vague, it suggests that his desperate desire could be to achieve the opposite of what he intended. "I'd rather thou should'st painfully repent / Than by my threat'nings rest still innocent" (16-17). He could hope to threaten the mistress into loving him. By keeping harsher

Speaker in the poem seems to be a woman who is in a relationship. The speaker’s attitude does seem to change throughout the course of the poem. In the first stanza of the poem, the speaker seems to be hopeful by saying that relationships should be flexible. In the next three stanzas of the poem, the speaker seems to be sad at the fact that

Since the reader is able to get their own idea of the poem, the person could always see one of two things. One being that this woman is getting all the attention from her love or two that she’s being held against her will and doesn’t want what the man has for her. With not have much words describing her being kept under the man’s control, the reader must decide for themselves what is really happening in this scenario. Either way the reader is always going to see something that maybe the author didn’t think of when writing

The second stanza describes the lover. The lyrical voice says about the lover: “His soul sincere, his generous worth”. And, more importantly, the lyrical voice says he/she is touched by this generosity and sincerity that the lover has (“Might well this bosom move”). It is clear, in the next two lines, that this relationship is extremely passionate and personal for the lyrical voice. When he/she asks for joy (“And when I asked for bliss on earth”) he/she means love, but not any love: “I only meant his love”.

The words used in the poem is very natural and free flowing. This is further amplified with the distinctive lack of proper punctuation that the poem has. The author repetitive use of “let” shows the readers how colloquial language is used to amplify the normality of the love between the lovers. In addition, the words such as “feast to come” and “knees held in mine” reflects the intimacy that the speaker has with his lover. The poet’s use of diction further amplifies the love left by the speaker; as the speaker yearns for the lips of his lover and without it feels “abandoned like a child”.