Carol Ann Duffy Valentine

Since the beginning of human existence love has earned a meaning of pure bliss and wild passion between two people that cannot be broken. Through out time the meaning of love has had its slight shifts but for the most part, maintains a positive value. In the poem “Love Should Grow Up Like a Wild Iris in the Fields,” the author, Susan Griffin expresses that this long lost concept of love is often concealed by the madness of everyday life and reality. In the poem, Griffin uses many literary elements to help convey the importance of true love. The usage of imagery, symbolism, and other literary techniques really help communicate Griffins’ meaning

“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”.

“First Poem for You,” by Kim Addonizio, illustrates a night between two lovers lying next to each other. From this sonnet, it is discovered that through symbolism, imagery, and structure, the speaker’s views on relationships are embellished.

Written in the form of a Shakespearean sonnet, one could hardly mistake it for anything so pleasant. Sonnets being traditionally used for beautiful, appealing topics, already there is contradiction between

William Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 116” and Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Love Is Not All” both attempt to define love, by telling what love is and what it is not. Shakespeare’s sonnet praises love and speaks of love in its most ideal form, while Millay’s poem begins by giving the impression that the speaker feels that love is not all, but during the unfolding of the poem we find the ironic truth that love is all. Shakespeare, on the other hand, depicts love as perfect and necessary from the beginning to the end of his poem. Although these two authors have taken two completely different approaches, both have worked to show the importance of love and to define it. However, Shakespeare is most confident of his definition of love, while Millay seems

Love is not always an easy adventure to take part in. As a result, thousands of poems and sonnets have been written about love bonds that are either praised and happily blessed or love bonds that undergo struggle and pain to cling on to their forbidden love. Gwendolyn Brooks sonnet "A Lovely Love," explores the emotions and thoughts between two lovers who are striving for their natural human right to love while delicately revealing society 's crime in vilifying a couples right to love. Gwendolyn Brooks uses several examples of imagery and metaphors to convey a dark and hopeless mood that emphasizes the hardships that the two lovers must endure to prevail their love that society has condemned.

Love through relationships can be represented in many ways, for example romantic love and platonic love. In “A Bolt of White Cloth” by Leon Rooke, the couple has many types of love relationships. The wife loves her husband in a passionate way, the wife also has a deep connection and love for their cat that passed away. A relationship with a child is also mention by the man, however we soon discover they are unable to conceive. The evil apparent in the relationship with the cat is death, death by the actions of mankind. When the man inquires about their love and what they have loved, the woman replies, “Last year this time I had me a fourth, but it got run over. Upon the road there, by the time tall trees, by a man who didn’t even stop” (Rooke 3). Even after the passing of the cat the women's love was unconditional, it states, “She’d dug a grave under the grapevine and said sweet words over it. She sorely missed the cats” (Rooke 3). Death is inevitable, someday the passing of our loved ones will come. Death of the cat symbolizes the evil present in their love relationships.

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.

The sonnet opens with a statement of uncertainty as the speaker admits, “I’m not sure how to hold my face when I dance” (1). Immediately thereafter, the speaker poses three questions, all of which allude to the contemplative tone of the poem. While these inquiries regard the subject of dance, the speaker also intends for them to be metaphors for the uncertainty he, as a black man, has for his place in society. His questions are rapid-fire, almost probing the audience for answers that may not truly exist. An obvious lack of breaks for these questions to be answered shows that the speaker must believe that they, in fact, have no answers. These first four sentences are crucial in the sonnet’s development, as they provoke thought and contemplation so that the reader’s mind can be in the same place as the speaker.

Carol Anne Duffy presents love and romance in a unique way that differentiates valentine from any other love poem. Throughout this poem carol expresses love though the original metaphor of an onion. This essay analyses how she does this so effectively and how she presents a range of ideas about love and romance.

The poem describes why it is a powerful gift of love, rather than roses or chocolates. The onion becomes a metaphor for love. In ‘Adultery’ Duffy writes about the sense of danger and excitement of an adulterer, through the eyes of the person who is betrayed. The title ‘Valentine’ creates certain expectations, which Duffy doesn’t satisfy.

Duffy’s Rapture tells the tale of Duffy’s own romantic relationship over the course of 15 years, concisely put into a collection of 62 poems. Therefore, throughout the collection she shows the different stages through romantic relationship, from beginning to end. Uniquely, Hour looks at love overall as a synopsis; through the eyes of an older person looking over their relationship as an infinite period of type. Hour looks retrospectively at desperate young love, the wealth of more mature relationships, and finally the infinite feeling after years of companionship with the thought of mortality in mind. Through Rapture, Duffy shows the

Carol Ann Duffy’s ‘Valentine’ ultimately depicts a highly cynical attitude towards love and conventional gestures of affection. The poem uses traditional images of valentine as a starting point, before showing how an onion is much more true to the nature of love. An extended metaphor of the onion is then used to depict Duffy’s underlying implication that love can be destructive on many different levels.

     The sonnet, being one of the most traditional and recognized forms of poetry, has been used and altered in many time periods by writers to convey different messages to the audience. The strict constraints of the form have often been used to parallel the subject in the poem. Many times, the first three quatrains introduce the subject and build on one another, showing progression in the poem. The final couplet brings closure to the poem by bringing the main ideas together. On other occasions, the couplet makes a statement of irony or refutes the main idea with a counter statement. It leaves the reader with a last impression of what the author is trying to say.

has written the poem in this way in an attempt to portray love as a