Analysis Of The Poem ' Twenty One Love Poems ' By Adrienne Rich

Love is a basic human need that everyone encounters at least once, if not more, in his or her lifetime. There are different means to look for a future lover, whether it is through the Internet, or meeting someone coincidentally at a restaurant. Then there is also the idea of writing a personal ad in newspapers describing exactly what you seek for in a relationship. In Wendy Cope’s villanelle “Lonely Hearts,” there are individuals who have written ads describing themselves, as well as what they want in the other person. In Cope’s poem there is the use of tone, repetition, and rhyme that work together in order to illustrate the lonesome and desperate people who rely on newspaper ads to find love.

Richard Blanco is a Cuban- American poet who was given the oppurunity to write an inaugaration poem for Barack Obama's second swearing-in. He wrote a poem titled "One Today" that praised the good and unique things about the United States and also the everyday people who's daily routines help to make America the proud country that it is.

“Love Poem” by John Frederick Nims is an excellent of example of an author using many types of literary terms to emphasize his theme of a love that is imperfect yet filled with acceptance. In, this poem Nims uses assonance, metaphor, and imagery to support his theme of “Imperfect, yet realistic love”.

The first narrative collection I chose to do is poetry. In my poem, I talked about the Society in the book Matched. I connected the poem to the theme of rules and order. The theme for the poem relates to how the realization of corrupted power and rules will make one stand by their moral. Before the Society was created, technology was a main problem that causes complication with the citizens.

Adrienne Cecile Rich was an American Poet and feminist born May 16, 1929 died March 27th 2012, was born in Baltimore, Maryland and the oldest of two sisters from a middle class family, Rich was educated by her parents until she entered public school in the fourth grade. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Radcliffe College in 1951, the same year her first book of poems, A Change of World, appeared. That volume, chosen by W. H. Auden for the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award, and her next, The Diamond Cutters and Other Poems (1955), earned her a reputation as an elegant, controlled stylist. Adrienne was known to be one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century",and was credited with bringing "the

Many love poems are not actually about love; rather they are the objectification of a woman into a vessel for desire. John Donne’s poem ‘To His Mistress Going to Bed’1 appears on the surface to be a poem celebrating the beauty of the female body and the joys of sex. However it is through a closer reading that we see that this poem is in fact not celebrating the woman at all, rather she becomes an object through which the speaker can achieve his desire. By looking at Slavoj Žižek’s essay ‘Courtly Love, or, Woman as

Traditionally, poets write love poems to express their deep affection with smooth, pleasing, songlike words, which flow in harmony. John Frederick Nims’ poem “Love Poem” is not traditional. Although the title seems generic and conventional, Nims uses a very different approach to express the love for his wife. He uses a series of hyperboles and metaphors to present his conflicting emotions. Rather than directly indicating his true love, Nims seems to challenge his own feelings by finding faults on his “dear” and indicating he still loves her despite all her mishaps. This unique twist gives Nims’ poem an unconventional effect that combines humor, frankness, and a touch of solemnity.

Poets’ representations of visual arts often feature themes of love and romance. Many poets have the root of romance in their nature; therefore, to praise and to admire the beauty of love and intimacy become important components in many poems. At the beginning of Keats’ poem, he shows his reader a vivid scene of love about “pursuit” and “escape” between men and women (9); in addition, a suggestion of intimacy about “marble men and maidens overwrought” is another example of how the speaker acknowledged the theme of love on the urn (42). Compare to Keats’ poem, Lee’s poem contains stronger erotic scene of intimacy between the speaker and his lover Donna in the yard. Interestingly, using the speech of his father, the speaker emphasizes the similes between holding a persimmon and caressing his lover: sniffing the “scent”, sensing the “texture”, and feeling the “weight” (86-88). Thus, the frequent association between images in visual arts and poets’ representation of love is another charming feature of literature.

Adrienne Rich’s “Twenty-One Love Poems,” mainly focus on lesbian lovers which is a different style of writing from typical love poetry that is usually written by a man to a woman. The two poems that will be focused on are “To His Coy Mistress” written by Andrew Marvell as well as “There Is a Garden in Her Face” by Thomas Campion. Rich’s love poems mainly focus on two women who work together against all odds using the strength of their love. They also have a powerful love for one another which keeps their relationship close and deep. In contrast, the poems that are written by the male poets seem as though they speak of their lover as being a goddess or someone they worship rather than a partner. The attraction that the men have in these poems for the women is mostly physical attraction. They look at women as beautiful, innocent, and pure which is not realistically correct in most cases. Specifically in Marvell and Campion’s poems it seems like more of a fairy tale rather than a real love story in which Rich describes in her poems. Another noticeable difference among these writers is that Rich spoke mainly of women she is close to and had . Whereas Marvell and Campion described the women as simply beautiful and enchanting.

William Black divided his poems into three parts: Songs of Innocence, Songs of Experience and The Book of Thel. Songs of Innocence was published in 1789 and Songs of Experience was published in 1794. From Songs of Innocence to Songs of Experience, William Black’s arduous journey of thought and writing which grew from a naive child state to an adult level. "The Book of Thel" is a good introduction to his more difficult "prophetic books". I think these poems are belong to Free Verse because all of these poems are different from each other. Some are very long and others are short and many of them do not rhyme at all. Small parts of these poems belong to Sonnet, Quatrain and Sestina, etc. This poet falls in Neoclassicism. I think he does not work the same tendency. Because his poems are belong to Romanticism. He works like many other poets such as William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Lord Byron. I think the importance of this book is growth, because the style of Songs of Innocence is very different from Songs of Experience, In Songs of Innocence, he showed us a vivacious, fresh and naivety childhood. In Songs of Experience, he showed us the gross social inequality. My final points are in both the Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience.

Christopher Marlowe’s poem “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” is widely understood to be a combination of pastoral and carpe diem poetry that invites its subject, with the incentives of gifts and paradise, to join its speaker in a natural utopia—it embodies the trend of poetry and invention through pastoral imagination. In comparison, Walter Ralegh’s “The Nymphs Reply to the Shepherd” is on the side of reason and philosophy, widely recognized as a refuting reply that uses Marlowe’s own structure against him to reject the Shepherd’s invitation. The question then becomes, if Ralegh’s response is rooted in logic and meant to discredit Marlowe’s work, why is it crucial that it be written in the exact same form? Ralegh’s choice to directly mirror Marlowe’s poetry allows for reinterpretation and subtle tweaking of the piece, so as to respond to it in the most critical way. “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd” mirrors, repeats, and slightly alters aspects of the original work to use Marlowe’s own words and structure to critique both its content and essence as a poem.

Not to my surprise, the Iconic singer Tina Turner’s 1984, number one hit song, “What’s Love got to do with it,” became her signature song most recognized among her fans. Questioning a relationship’s worth and meaning is an endless universal topic with many diverse opinions and beliefs of what’s morally right or wrong. Similarly, Sharon Olds’ 1985 poem “Sex without Love” reflects a speaker’s disapproval and disappointment articulated with an ironic tone. At first glance, the speaker seems to be baffled on how an action can occur without the presence of the other, but as one reads on its obvious the irony is evident. The use of metaphors climaxes the beauty of Sex that includes love while associating the loveless sex with harsh realism magnitudes. The setting of the poem coincides timelessly in any era due to its direct point of related interest and act of nature. Sharon Olds’ poem “Sex without Love,” delivery of imagery and tone heightens the speakers overall positive and negative outlook on the correlation of sex and love.

David Lehman is an artist that speaks for the modern generations in his poetry collection “When a Woman Loves a Man.” In addition to producing his own works he teaches his craft at NYU and the New School in their graduate programs. While his prior-mentioned collection includes an entire section of love poetry, it is impossible to simply categorize Lehman as just a love poet because he is also a life poet. Considering that this work was produced and influenced by the tensions of post-9/11 New York, this collection of poetry represents the grit of New Yorkers, and also represents that even after great tragedy like the World Trade Center attack, the lives of tough people go on and there is still living left to do.

Love can exist as affection, infatuation, obsession, pleasure and many more, this is because, love is abstract, hence there is no one single interpretation of love. Love is a theme that has been embedded into language and literature for centuries and centuries, yet due to the ever changing perception of love people these days continues to search for a universal definition of love. Poems are able to showcase the inner feelings and desires of a poet as well as their own unique views on love. Nevertheless, through poems “La Belle Dame sans Merci” by John Keats, “My Last Duchess” by Robert Browning, and “Mother in a Refugee Camp” by Chinua Achebe, we can explore how and why different poets present the theme of love differently.

Abstract: Adrienne Rich (1929-2012) seems to stand in consonance with thinkers of Cultural Studies like Raymond Williams, Stuart Hall, Dick Hebdige and many others who realized the power of the working class, as an agency of resistance to the prevalent ideology. She like them sees culture as venue to spread ideology and to resist it. Thus, deep understanding of Rich’s works reveals them to be an ideological struggle with a aim to empower the powerless. In her poetry of 90’s Rich was at the zenith of her creative powers and her work was diverse and variegated, encompassing a host of themes. She keenly strove to fulfill her aim of the enfranchisement of the deprived, employing sundry poetic skills and