The More Loving One

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

Auden’s poem is a criticism of human perceptions and how we use them to detect, or suppress human suffering. In the first half of the poem Auden “compares versions of indifference by portraying youth and age, animals, and humans” (Shmoop, 2014). In the first few lines of the poem, Auden comments on the perceptions of the “Old Masters” and how they were never wrong in their discernment of suffering. He then compares the old masters perceptions to the perceptions of children and animals and how they are unaware of,

“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”.

Jeannine Johnson concurs, confirming, “The poet argues that wisdom and age do not determine one 's power to love deeply and honestly. Even though Annabel and her lover were young, the speaker contends that their feelings surpassed those of all others” (1). In matters of love, age is an insignificant factor for those who cannot see past the passion in each other’s eyes.

The poem "Clocks and Lovers" by W. H. Auden’s contrasts the idea of whether or not love will outlast time. Initially, the poem portrays a lover affirming the belief that love will triumph over time. The poem transitions and depicts the clocks' argument that due to time, love will eventually fade away. The narrator contrasts the two arguments with usage of imagery, personification, tone and diction. The argument that love will prevail over time is contrasted by the belief that as time goes by, time can never be stopped and love will not last. Overall, neither belief is represented as correct because the narrator contrasts the two opposing arguments by displaying that two arguments are incompatible. In regards to their following arguments, time is not as malicious or arduous to love but love is not impervious to time.

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.

W.H. Auden and Bruce Dawe, in their respective poems ‘Stop All The Clocks’ and ‘Suburban Lovers’, depict two different reactions to love. Auden’s use of an A, A, B, B, rhyme scheme creates rhythm through each of his 4 stanaz. Contrastingly, Dawe uses syllabic rhythm such as “on the fleet diesel that interprets them, like music on a roller-piano as they move, over the rhythmic rails”. Dawe also uses alliteration to create this similar pattern such as “breeze blowing”, “cliff of kissing” and “sandstone sustaining”. Both of these techniques create tone within each poem allowing the reader to reflect the mood of each poem. Auden’s rhyme scheme portrays a tone of sadness and grief in its simple structure and Dawe reflecting a tone of joy and longing

Auden illustrates how people react to the suffering of others by choosing not to “look” at it. When bad things happen, people turn away and continue on with their lives. For instance it states that “In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away/ Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may/ Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry;” (14-16) In the poem “Musée des Beaux Arts” “…the expensive delicate ship that must have seen/Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, / Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on” (19-21). The sailors saw t

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.

Poetry has a role in society, not only to serve as part of the aesthetics or of the arts. It also gives us a view of what the society is in the context of when it was written and what the author is trying to express through words. The words as a tool in poetry may seem ordinary when used in ordinary circumstance. Yet, these words can hold more emotion and thought, however brief it was presented.

This collection of over ninty words is much more than just a poem. It’s a story of millions of people. It ties in rhymes, sadness, happiness, religion and anger though a broad spectrum of other ideas.

In fact, there are many critics who believe that this poem was Auden’s own epitaph on Hitler- a personal ode to the man who had wielded such power in the years of his dictatorship and played no small role in shaping the world as we know it today and they had known it then.

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.

“The relationship between the energies of the inquiring mind that an intelligent reader brings to the poem and the poem’s refusal to yield a single comprehensive interpretation enacts vividly the everlasting intercourse between the human mind, with its instinct to organise and harmonise, and the baffling powers of the universe about it.”

Bryon’s poem “When we two parted” (written in 1815) and Landon’s poem “Love’s Last Lesson” (written in 1838) are both compelling and express the element of love. Even though one poem is written by a male author and the other by a female author, both works are noticeably similar. The well known poets are British and their work falls under the Romanticism Genre of poetry. “When we two parted” is a story of lost love—Byron strategically unfolds the dynamic of a dead relationship. He infuses emotional trauma into a first person perspective. This style of writing engages the audience and allows them to personally experience