In the polemic “Against Love”, Laura Kipnis considers love to be a mysterious force, which attaches to people as if it controls their thoughts and decisions. It is a capricious tyrant, who bring forth the tragedy for those failing to achieve such essential feeling. Still, artists create romantic poems about its cruelty while audiences enjoying watching the pain it gives to them. Ironically, through such pain, people yearn for a glimmer of brief happiness.
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 is a really beautiful thing, but it isn’t everything you have to live for. In life, you will need many things other than love to survive. In “Sonnet XXX of Fatal Interview” by Edna St. Vincent Millay, a poem written as a Shakespearean sonnet, an anonymous speaker discusses how your world doesn’t revolve around love yet you need it in your your life. The sonnet starts off with the speaker’s direct objective of informing the reader “Love is not all” but ends with an opposing purpose that they would not give up love for anything. In order for the speaker to figure out the importance and value of love to themselves, they will have to learn the difference between what they truly desire and require.
In the poem, The Love song, written by T.S. Elliot, J Alfred Prufrock is a man who is very lonely and insecure. He goes throughout his life wishing for a change, but never stepping up to the plate and actually making a change. The title of the poem portrays to the reader that the poem is going to be full of love and romance. The reader soon found out later that the poem is just the opposite from the title, a sad, lonesome man who is not only lacking love, but also lacking self confidence and self esteem.
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.
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”.
Throughout “Love Should Grow up Like an Wild Iris in the Fields” Susan Griffin provokes the readers to think twice about why they consistently enslave themselves with the burden of daily monotony, instead of enjoying the simplicity of love. Griffin uses two metaphors in her poem when describing love, as a flower, as well as the iris of an eye. Her comparisons are both interesting as well as accurate.
As coined by the Father of His Country, “It is far better to be alone, than to be in bad company.” This is doubly appropriate as love is nothing more than a series of traumatic and disappointing events. Certain authors utilize their works to portray love from their perspective and/or experience. In “Love Song, with Two Goldfish” by Grace Chua, the author illustrates rejection in the most heartbreaking way possible. In the poem “What Love Isn’t” by Yrsa Daley-Ward, she depicts love as unbearable and somber rather than the joyful and wholesome experience consistently shown throughout pop culture. In the short story, “Was It a Dream?” by Guy de Maupassant, the narrator grieves the loss of his beloved only to have his feelings of woe amplified by betrayal. Through their illustrations, the authors show that love is an extraordinary experience that is often filled with pain, distrust, and despair.
The first part of the quote teaches you that you cannot be comfortable with other people, unless you are comfortable with yourself first. In other words, you have to be able to live with who you are and be confident in that. Although, being confident in yourself is a lot harder than it seems. Going through school as a teenager can be very difficult; that specific time of your life can determine what kind of a person you are or become. When you try to go through public schooling and you are not confident in who you are, it can be miserable. So much learning takes place during that time of your life, and if you can never be sure of yourself when you’re young, you will struggle when you make it to the “real world.” On the contrary, if you can stand strong in who you are, and not waver for the benefits of others, then you will be much happier in the end. Knowing who you are may not make
Throughout time love has been a luxury reserved for the rich and beautiful, desperately sought after by all. Feeling loved makes, us feel safe and secure. For many, they have yet to experience it but it is something that seems to escape the grasp of those who long for it the most. “So various, so beautiful, so new” (32.), is how Matthew Arnold described his new romance and the worries of the world and the discoveries that come with it. Arnolds “Dover Beach” is a beautiful poem of love and worry questioning the future and what is to come and wondering if the love shared between the two lovers of the poem will continue to exist forever in time. However, is love really a wonderful prospect. Is love actually a beautiful thing to be cherished and searched for avidly? In Anthony Hecht’s “The Dover Bitch” the image illustrated seems to have an opposite view of love. Or are both poems compliments to each other both being true but only showing apart but with the two they are a whole?
Love has a voice that speaks to everyone differently. For some people it is a gentle whisper, but for others it is a scream, yearning to be noticed. Love is a common theme in literature, discussed in many works. Love is a very broad term, that can be defined in many different ways. Love has many characteristics, with many individual interpretations. In this essay, I will be talking about three poems: Robert Graves’ Symptoms of Love, Bob McKenty’s Adam’s Song, and Muriel Stuart’s In the Orchard. Each of these poems demonstrates their own meaning of love, and each author interprets love in their own different ways.
You’ll be mine and I’ll be yours. Everything will be perfect until one screws up, but what if no one screws up? Yes, if no one screws up you made it to the finish line of a “happily ever after”. Love is such a crazy thing, one day is alive and growing and the next is fading until it completely dies. Everyone will have their own view on love, but love is vague, for one knows about today but not about tomorrow. In her critique of love, “Against Love,” Laura Kipnis offers a judgmental version of what constitutes “real love”. She questions whether we truly desire love, or rather, are conditioned to. She asserts that social forms accustomed us to pursue a love life so that we are entertained and wanted. But everyone has a different opinion on the matter. In his short story, “What We Talk about When We Talk about Love,” Raymond Carver tells the story of four different individuals in which he explores the perceptions of love by referring to their beliefs and experiences. One of the four characters, Mel, seems to have an unclear perspective on love himself as he questions his love life and asserts that everyone is entitled to look for love when is missing. If Mel was to have a conversation with Kipnis they would agree and disagree on certain ideas, for they both are able to understand the complexity of the matter. Mel would agree with Kipnis that society forces one to feel like a failure when love dies and that people move on because society expects us to, as he questions his
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.