Research Paper and Poem Analysis: Tennessee Williams We Have Not Long To Analyze This Poem Remember a time when the adrenaline ran through you, speeding your every movement, and the nervous feeling that overtook your entire body. Now remember a time when you felt relaxed and calm, like the clock stopped and time stood still. Now, as strange as it sounds, imagine those two feelings combining. This surreal state seems to describe the mood of the twenty-line poem “We Have Not Long to Love” by playwright and poet Tennessee Williams. This poem reflects that feeling when you know there’s no time and you must act quickly, but time seems not to move. The word choice, in the beginning, reflects a rushed feeling “We have not long to love. / Light does not stay.” (Williams 1-2). Then the poem suddenly changes the mood to relaxed, like there’s enough time for anything, “In silence I have watched you / comb your hair.” (7-8). Further statements, “I could but did not, reach / to touch your arm. / I could, but do not, break / that which is still.” (11-14) give the impression that he is indecisive and that he has time to both make up and change his mind. The last four lines are …show more content…
We already discussed lines 11 through 14, in which the poet, contemplates his actions toward this woman, debating whether to touch her arm establishing physical contact or “break / that which is still” by telling her how he feels about her. I’d also like to acknowledge and appreciate the ironic wordplay of an rhythm-cracking line break after the word “break”. “(Almost the faintest whisper / would be shrill.)” (15-16) suggest that anything he says will be taken the wrong way and he will regret it. He is trapped in his mind between letting this girl know how he feels about her and being disappointed by her reaction because, in the words of Jonathan Coulton, “Isn’t it better not to know?” (in-text citation required of “Big Bad World
In line 7 (“He isn’t an enemy now”) the speaker is telling herself that she should not be dwelling on the past because her ex can’t hurt her anymore. The “bitch” seems to be doing fine in controlling her emotions until line 9 when her ex-lover asks her: ““How are the children? They must be growing up.” An immediate change of tone occurs here. There is an internal struggle going on between her heart and her mind. The speaker’s mind is telling her to be polite to her ex, forget the past and move on. The bitch’s heart, on the other hand, is keeping her from moving on and causing her to struggle with feelings of desire. This is clear, for example, in lines 10-13: “At a kind word from him... Down, girl! Keep your distance.” The speaker knows that if she accidentally gets to close to this ex-lover by having feelings again, she will only end up getting hurt. Kind words and gestures can often be deceiving and I have learned that unfortunately charming people are dangerous. I have been hurt numerous times by such personalities by only looking at their kind side and ignoring other flaws. The bitch is warning herself to not get caught up in this trap of feelings again.
mind. It suggest the poet see it as love or nothing and that he was
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.
He came off as very insecure with all of his stalling. He was so down on himself that he even believed his question could “disturb the universe” and thought that his potential lover would take his question the wrong way. The poem was centered on the insecurities of man and the inability to act. The speaker was a coward and made excuses so he wouldn’t have to ask the question he so wanted to ask. Everything seemed to make him anxious and his anxiety stopped him from getting what he really wanted.
In conclusion, the poem points the inevitable cycle of natural and emotional events and the power that love has to go beyond that cycle. This is why the speaker assures that the way he has loved is something that
In the context of the entire poem, what is the meaning and significance of the last eight lines of the poem?
The tone of this poem is a mixture of emotions. She seems to enjoy being in his company, although the stories he shares break her heart. She expresses her conflicting feeling when she states the following:
The third and fourth stanzas offer the poems greatest paradoxes. The author speaks of the lovers being "At this unique distance from isolation" which is to say they are in the one place where they can truly be themselves, in their natural habitat, doing that which is only natural to human instinct. Despite these circumstances, however, the two are at a loss: "It becomes still more difficult to find / Words at once true and kind, / Or not untrue and not unkind." It is through this final stanza that the author conveys the ultimate paradox of human relationships: Relationships are not built upon true love for one another; rather they are built upon the absence of hatred.
In these few lines, the speaker abruptly switches the tone from bitter to sympathetic. The poem becomes urgent, with a need to know. “The peculiar screeching of strings” characterizes the man’s thoughts, and “the luxurious fiddling with emotion” directly refers to the man’s emotional state.
The poem opens with the lines, “Now that I've met you would you object to never seeing each other again.” From the very first line, the reader knows about the intent of the poet. She has been in
The third stanza goes on to define the pain, only now in more emotional terms, such as "It hurts to thwart the reflexes / of grab, of clutch" (14-15), as well as the pain of continuously having to say good bye, each perhaps as if for the last time: "to love and let / go again and again" (15-16). These lines reinforce the impression that the first stanza's definition of "to love differently" is in fact an anti-freedom or state of emotional anarchy, now using words like "pester" to describe any separation; the poet is compelled "to remember / the lover who is not in the bed" (16), hinting at obsessive tendencies as being possible components of the relationship. We also learn that she believes love requires work, which she cannot do without her partner's assistance, and that this lack of cooperation frustrates her. She believes this neglected effort is the other party's fault by his failure to do his fair share, thereby leaving her own efforts ineffective, the whole of it characterized as an effort "that gutters like a candle in a cave / without air" (19-20). Her demands of this work are quite broad, encompassing being "conscious, conscientious and concrete" in her efforts and optimistically calling this work "constructive" (20-21) before ending the stanza.
The poem’s author, Robert Frost, focuses on the theme and the mood by representing the choices and decisions that have to be made.
Because the speaker is direct and clear, we are able to recognize the nostalgic tone simply because of what the speaker is explicitly telling us. However, the structure of the poem also contributes to the tone. There are no punctuations throughout the entire poem, yet we still read it slow enough to create a dramatic and sad mood. The poem is divided into fourteen couplets, each with a substantial gap between them. At the end of a couplet, we are forced to slow down and fully pause before moving on to a new section. In addition, most of the lines are complete clauses
He describes the love he feels towards her and her love towards him. He gets more excited and happy as the poem goes on. “She’ll run upstairs through the decaying porch burning with love and happiness." (453, Yevtushenko). Although things have changed and gotten old, she still burns with love at the idea of seeing him. He continues on, getting more heartfelt and emotional. He describes what happens when they finally embraced. “She’ll run dripping upstairs, she won’t knock, will take my head in her hands.” (453, Yevtushenko). His lover didn’t even bother covering herself from the rain when she ran in because she was too excited to see him after so long. He explains that only she understands him. He does not worry about how much he has changed over the years, he believes that even if they had changed, they would still love each other regardless. “Will understand my fears, observe my changes.” (453, Yevtushenko). He has absolute love and trust in her, and rests his entire entity with
This piece has several “mini” themes given to almost each stanza, emphasizing reminiscing, grief, and isolation. Appearing to be from the point of view of a man (apparently the writer himself) profoundly grieving the departure of a lover who has passed on. He starts by calling for quiet from the ordinary objects of life; the phones, the clocks, the pianos, drums, and creatures close-by. He doesn't simply need calm, but be that as it may; he needs his misfortune well known and projected. Its tone is significantly more dismal than earlier versions, and the themes more all inclusive, despite the fact that it talks about a person. There is almost an entire stanza demonstrating a bunch of analogies that express what the speaker intended to his lover. The style in the piece readers typically perceive it as a dirge, or a mourning for the dead. It has four stanzas of four lines each with lines in