Essay Comparing Larkin And Elizabeth Jennings

James Fenton and Carol Ann Duffy are both contemporary poets. Their poems ‘In Paris with You’ and ‘Quickdraw’ both include the themes of the pain of love. This essay compares how the two poets present the pain of love in their poems, exploring things such as imagery, vocabulary and form and structure.

In 1786, Helen Maria Williams published a two-volume poetry collection. The collection was titled Poems and A Song is featured there in that area. A Song has six sections. Each section consists of one stanza that has four lines and an ABAB rhyme scheme and the metre is similar to that of an iambic trimeter. Moreover, there is a great use of punctuation. The poem’s central theme is love and how a particular emotional relationship affects the lyrical voice.

A leader of the romantic era’s poetic revolution, Lord Byron transformed poetry by incorporating realistic perceptions into his works. The romantic era, known for it’s innovative belief in “[praising] imagination over reason, emotions over logic, and intuition over science,” assisted in helping Byron create pragmatic, dramatic tones in his poetry (“The Romantic Era”). One of the most flamboyant of the English Romantic poets, Byron captivated readers through his dynamic views of independence and politics. However, his perceptions of love and women, shown through narrative perspectives, rendered his writings as the “image and name [of] the embodiment of Romanticism” (“Lord Byron (George Gordon),” Poetry Foundation). Love and poetry, constantly

In this essay I am going to compare and contrast ‘When we two parted’ a poem of George Gordon, Lord Byron’s written in 1815 and Letitia Elizabeth Landon’s ‘Love’s last lesson’ written in c1838, both poets are British and of the romantic period.

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

Compare how the poets present love in “Nettles” and in one other poem from the Relationships cluster.

Unlike other forms of literature, poetry can be so complex that everyone who reads it may see something different. Two poets who are world renowned for their ability to transform reader’s perceptions with the mere use of words, are TS Eliot and Walt Whitman. “The love song of J Alfred Prufrock” by TS Eliot, tells the story of a man who is in love and contemplating confessing his emotions, but his debilitating fear of rejection stops him from going through with it. This poem skews the reader’s expectations of a love song and takes a critical perspective of love while showing all the damaging emotions that come with it. “Song of myself”, by Walt Whitman provokes a different emotion, one of joy and self-discovery. This poem focuses more on the soul and how it relates to the body. “Song of myself” and “The love song of J Alfred Prufrock” both explore the common theme of how the different perceptions of the soul and body can affect the way the speaker views themselves, others, and the world around them.

In the poems “Pamphillia to Amphilanthus” and “I… and Your Eyes,” there are similarities and differences. The poems are both about love. The poems have different perspectives on how they view love. The poems have the same subject, but in contrast have differences of how the subject is viewed. The poems’ styles and theme also have differences and similarities. Love is perceived differently in each poem.

The poets, Gwen Harwood, Geoff Goodfellow and Judith Wright, all explore the idea of “individuals and those they love” using both imagery and form. Through female perspectives, each poet presents how women can feel conflicted, desiring a fulfilling relationship without the inevitable pain and suffering.

Philip Larkin and Dannie Abse have very different and contrating attitudes to relationships. On the whole, Larkin presents the concepts of love and marriage as very superficial and meaningless, whereas Abse appears to be less such nihilistic and more open and positive about such topics. The essay will discuss this contrast by examing Larkin’s “Whitsun Weddings”, “Wild Oats” and “Arundel Tomb”, and Dannie Abse’s “Imitations” and “Sons”.

Love can be quite a difficult topic to write about, expressing one’s intimate and innermost emotions requires a great level of dedication and honesty. If done correctly, the outcome is truly stunning. John Donne’s “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” and Katherine Philips’s “To Mrs. M.A. at Parting” are two masterpieces of this genre. These poems depict the concept of true love so meticulously that the reader cannot help but envy the relationships presented. Perhaps the reason that these works are so effective is due to the fact that they are incredibly similar to each other. Although some differences are present when it comes to structure and gender concerns, the poems share the same theme of love on a spiritual level and show many parallels in meaning.

Love makes people become selfish, but it is also makes the world greater. In this poem, the world that the speaker lives and loves is not limited in “my North, my South, my East and West / my working week and my Sunday rest” (9-10), it spreads to “My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song (11). The poem’s imagery dominates most of the third stanza giving readers an image of a peaceful world in which everything is in order. However, the last sentence of the stanza is the decisive element. This element not only destroys the inner world of the speaker, but it also sends out the message that love or life is mortal.

‘Sonnet 116’ by William Shakespeare and ‘What Lips My Lips Have Kissed, And Where, And Why” by Edna St. Vincent Millay are both sonnets that discuss companionship and a glimpse of each poet’s experiences. In ‘Sonnet 116’, Shakespeare illustrates how capability is weakened by its metaphysical stereotype and ideals such as, love, while on the contrary, in ‘What Lips My Lips Have Kissed, And Where, And Why” Millay feeds on the chaos between the ideal of love and its harsh reality, heartbreak. Both poets seem to be love struck but there is a significant difference in the two. I will compare and contrast ‘Sonnet 116’ by William Shakespeare and ‘What Lips My Lips Have Kissed, And Where, And Why” by Edna St. Vincent Millay. I will also inquire and analyze why this particular form of poetry established different effects.

Poetry in Elizabethan time was based on courtly love conventions which included conceits and complements. Themes such as the unattainability of the lady, sleeplessness, constancy in love, cruelty of the beloved, renunciation of love, fine passion of the lover versus icy emotions of the beloved, praise of the beloved’s beauty and eternalizing her as being subject of the poem; these all are

Adrienne Rich was a highly acclaimed twentieth-century poet who railed against war and the injustices in the world, and also used imagery that spoke tenderly of love—feelings that she sensed were both highly individual for her, but also universal. “Twenty-One Love Poems” were written between 1974-1976 to her lover of the time, and they track the course of the relationship through the sweet beginning stages, the development of mature love, and all the way through to its dissolution due to her partner’s seeming inability to “come out” and admit to her homosexuality at a time in society when relationships between women were not endorsed or supported. The language in these poems is very rich and weaves both ugly city imagery and elegant metaphors and similes together, with the apparent intention of making the reader search inside to see if the images and ideas conveyed by the language can be applied to the reader’s own experience of living too. While these poems are highly individualistic and at times very personal, this impressive and moving body of poetic accomplishment also reflects themes to which all human beings can relate.