John Donne And Cecile Day Lewis

How do(es) the use, meanings, connotations and denotations of the central image of the word “love” change(s) in Maragret Atwood’s Variations on the Word Love and also whether the poem may be viewed as a love poem.

The poem the ‘The Anniversary’ By John Donne, is a metaphysical poem about the sun itself growing older each year, this process reminds Donne that him and his lover are closer to their end. The second poem is called ‘One Flesh’, and is written by Elizabeth Jennings. In the course of this poem Jennings explores the relationship and separateness of her now elderly parents. There are multiple contrasting factors between these two poems, considering they are both written from different time periods and view love in sharply differing perspective.

“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”.

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

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.

mind. It suggest the poet see it as love or nothing and that he was

Poets have written love poems for centuries with the first said to be around 1000BC. But what is love? It is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as ‘ to have attachment to and affection for’. However, after studying various love poems, I have found that love is portrayed in many different ways. It can be possessive, hateful and pure and the fact that William Shakespeare said ‘The course of true love never did run smooth’ suggests that love is more complicated than a simple dictionary definition.

In the essay, “Love’s Vocabulary,” Diane Ackerman communicates the idea through figurative language, that love is an emotion that is seen universally, but no one can explain what it is. For instance, the analogy about music conveys Ackerman’s idea as it suggests that every person from different time periods and locations recognize love just as they recognize music, but they cannot comprehend its meaning.

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 is perhaps one of the most contested issues in the world. No one has a precise definition of what love really should look or feel like. Most people have resorted to use their own experiences in love to effectively derive its true meaning. Through these experiences, philosophers have argued that the definition of love varies greatly depending on whether it was given by a man or a woman. This is however not the case. As proven by the narratives of Beauvoir and Sartre, the definitions of love derived from the experiences of both men and women are quite similar. Consequentially, Beauvoir’s account of the woman in love sheds important light on Sartre’s conflicting thought about love. By first highlighting the concepts of love as stated by Beauvoir, this text seeks to establish how Beauvoir’s account of love lays a vital foundation for Sartre’s.

Since the beginning of time it was commonly believed that speech employing superfluous words and calculated gestures was the only indication of true love. Many began to convince themselves that a man only loved a women if he dramatically proclaims how noble his love for her is and makes false comparisons of how great her beauty is. Through great reputation of this style, however, one sees how unspontaneous this idea of romanticism truly is. Only a few fortunate couples come upon real true love, which is love that is strong not because it follows a seemingly perfect formula, but instead is strong through messy

The poem “How Do I Love Thee”, by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and “What Lips My Lips Have Kissed”, by Edna Vincent Millay are both well-known poems that both have themes of love. (LIT, Kirszner & Mandell, Pg. 490). In both poems the poet helps the reader experience a lot of emotion with the use of certain words. There are speakers in both poems. In Mrs. Browning’s poem, the speaker is undefined, leaving open that the speaker could be a he or she. Millay’s poem which is written in first person, the speaker is more defined leading the reader to believe it is a she who is talking about love in the past tense. Both poems are sonnets written with fourteen lines, and written in Italian style. When comparing these poems we will be looking at the use of rhyme scheme and metaphors and how they were used to express emotions in these two sonnet poems.

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

“The constraints of language help define our notion of romance,” writes Mark Steyn, “and in English we 're more constrained than most. There are just four and a half rhymes for ‘love,’ approximately three-quarters of which offer very meagre possibilities.” What is remarkable, in a way, is that there should be any rhymes at all. If language is differential at its base, if “differences of sound and sense are the only markers of meaning” (Norris 24-5), then similarity – the relative lack of difference – should, if anything, tend toward meaninglessness.

Whether you live in the twenty-first century or lived the early sixteenth century, the idea of love is the same. Falling in love is easy, while recovering from a broken heart is much more difficult. According to The Norton Anthology of Poetry, Sir Thomas Wyatt was a well-educated courtier and diplomat, spending much of his adult life abroad, until imprisoned for treason. After analyzing Wyatt’s poetic work, knowing his past experiences greatly helps find meaning in his sonnet poems. ‘They Flee From Me” is a masterpiece written by Wyatt that demonstrates his addiction to love with depressed temptation for past lovers.