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an essay on john donne as a love poet
examine the theme of love in John Donne
conceit of john donne in his love poems
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The Attitudes to Love Addressed in Loves Alchemy and Twicknam Garden
Twicknam Garden was a poem written by John Donne in 1607. It is one of
John Donne's late pieces of work and is thought to be written about
his patron and his feelings for her. Compared to his patron he was a
much lower class, almost a beggar compared to her. Twicknam Garden
shows a very unique outlook on love, it shows definate bitterness
towards love, but in a more reserved way than Loves Alchemy, Twicknam
Garden disdains love, but shows some respect towards the feeling.
Whereas Loves Alchemy holds a completely different outlook and
resentment to the feeling completely and wishes that this feeling had
never been felt at all.
Donne starts off Twicknam Garden with
"Blasted with sighs, and surrounded with tears"
This shows he is very emotional about the subject, and even thinking
of it makes him cry. He then goes on to say he wishes to find a cure
for this feeling, to receive a new feeling, and to stop the pain he
feels from his love for his patron:
"Hither I come to seek the spring,
Receive such balms, as else cure everything"
Donne expresses feelings of resentment towards the feelings he
possesses, as if they are something external, which have possessed
him. This seems more as if he has done something wrong, but does not
blame it on himself, blames it on another factor. He cannot take
responsibility for his own mistakes, and instead likes to think as if
he has been decieved.
"But O, self-traitor"
In Twicknam Garden Donne talks about how love can act as a poison and
how it can have more bad effects than beneficial,
"The spider love, w...
... middle of paper ...
...a being quite critical of women in general, saying
that they cannot be trusted.
"And take my tears, which are love's wine,
and try your mistress' tears at home,
For all are false, that taste not just like mine"
"Nor can you more judge a woman's thoughts by tears,
than by her shadow, what she wears"
Shows his ultimate untrusting nature towards women, brought about by
his latest passion. Donne says all tears that taste not like his own
are false, quite an arrogant and self centered view, but saying
something quite profound. No one knows what it is like to feel how
another does, people can feel similar, and have been in similar
situations, but no one feels the same emotions and feelings when
treated in specific ways. This means everyone's tears would "taste"
different, and so some therefore seem false.
When young and experimental, everyone remembers their first love and what it meant to them and how it shaped them. They are often fond memories of purity or naivety, however, sometimes, those experiences are haunting and leave permanent scars in people's hearts. “Coleman (1993)” tells the tragic love story of a female speaker and her lover. They appear to live out happy lives while keeping to themselves however, are separated later in the poem by a group of white boys who decide to murder her lover on a whim. Her interactions and thoughts about Coleman shape the fundamentals of the poem to the point that he is the driving force of this poem. His being is the purpose of Mary Karr’s piece of writing and her time with him and without
In Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club, Four pairs of mothers and daughters embark on the journey that is life. Each young woman comes to realize how valuable the relationships with their mothers are. As each daughter learns from her mother, she goes through the sometimes-painful process of trying to understand her enigmatic mother. To finally unravel the mystery surrounding their mothers is to understand who they, themselves, really are.
When readers reflect on the poetry of the seventeenth century, poets such as John Donne and the
The meaning of love cannot be defined in one sentence or even in 16 pages. Every human has his or her own definition of what love is. People define love by their own experiences whether as true love or ending in heartaches. In Raymond Carver’s short story, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, he describes what love is, by depicting what it is not. He executes this by portraying the experiences of four people, while using their dialogue and setting in the story to describe how something so beautiful as love can easily become an awkward and repelling subject to discuss.
In the article “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”, which was written by Raymond Carver in 1981, the author is mainly talking about the story from Mel McGinnis, who is at home with his wife Terri and their friends, Nick and Laura, are drinking gin and tonics and talking about love.
Attitudes Towards Love in Pre-1900 and 1990's Poetry “The Despairing Lover” written by William Walsh was written pre 1900 whilst the second poem “I Wouldn’t Thank you for a Valentine” by Liz Lockhead was written in the 1990’s. These poems are almost a century apart. Attitude towards love changes over time and these poems represent this. I Wouldn’t Thank you for a Valentine is about how people think about Valentine’s Day in the 1990’s, while The Despairing Lover is showing what people think and how important they see love in the 1990’s.
Desperately, people turn to use some words loosely. Take note when you are talking with people and you hear them using reminiscent words such as smart, pretty, beautiful, intelligent, or love in sentences. For the purpose of this paper, I will focus on the word Love due to the fact that love turns to apply in all the other words that people use loosely. There are numerous definitions of the word love, but I will pick one from Dictionary.com that states: A feeling of warm personal attachment or deep affection, as for a parent, child, or friend. It’s obvious that a large majority of people are content when they hear the phrase “I Love You”. On the other hand, when a person says I love you, it can be misinterpreted effortlessly. One question I
It is said that Millay's later work is more of a mirror image of her life. This particular poem was written 1931, when she was thirty-nine. Unlike some of her earlier work this is not a humorous poem. It is very deep and meaningful.
In Aldrous Huxley’s A Brave New World, pleasure is the main driving force in life. The government uses tools such as the wonder drug soma and the endorphins naturally released during and after sexual intercourse to keep the minds of their well-tended flock off of matters that might concern them if they had not previously been conditioned to resort to a vice the moment that they begin to conceive an ill thought. Lenina 's adulation of John, the Savage, is perhaps one of the more obvious triggers of soma usage within the novel. Lenina does not understand John 's concept of love, and attempts to show her affection in the only way she knows how, and that is by having sex with him. She thinks this is a normal act, but for him, it is sanctity. John believes that one should only express their passion through sex if they are married as is the custom on the reservation. This leads John to call Lenina many obscene names and to send her into the tender arms of soma instead. She merely wishes him to reciprocate her advances, which she would take as meaning that he was happy to be with her. She simply wants the both of them to be joyous in their carnal revelry but “Happiness is a hard master – particularly other people 's happiness. A much harder master, if one isn 't conditioned to accept it unquestioningly, than truth” (Huxley 227, Brave New World). John and Lenina are very different people however, as Lenina tells Bernard “I don 't understand … why you don 't take
In 'Twickernham Garden ' Donne cleverly uses a spider as the conceit of the poem to comment on the nature of love, to emphasise that just like a spider love traps you insidiously and leaves you helpless. As well as that there is religious connotations to transubstantiation and manna and serpents. By doing this Donne finds another way to create an effective poem in emphasising his meaning and thoughts. The Major conceit in 'A Valediction Forbidding Mourning ' is that of a compass. Samuel Johnson a fellow poet, who coined the term metaphysical poetry criticised Donne by stating that 'the poem 's compass analogy highlights the violence used by metaphysical poets to force the most heterogeneous ideas together. Disagreeing with this statement, Donne 's use of the compass to reinforce the idea that their souls are like the legs of the compass, even though they will physically separate he will always come back as they create something perfect 'Thy firmness makes my circle just and make me end where I begun '. The conceit reassures his lover that it is inevitable that he will return because they are joined spiritually, mentally and physically, and their love is strong because he will always come back to
In 'Love's Alchemy,'; John Donne sets up an analogy between the Platonists, who try, endlessly, to discover spiritual love, and the alchemists, who in Donne’s time, tried to extract gold from baser metals. This analogy allows Donne to express his beliefs that such spiritual love does not exist and those who are searching for it are only wasting their time. Donne cleverly uses language that both allows the reader to see the connections between the alchemists and the Platonists and that allows for a more sexual interpretation of the piece.
Hate, a passionate dislike for something or someone, has taken part of every war in the world, whether it is a political or civil one. Macklemore, the rapper of the song “Same Love”, uses powerful lyrics and imagery in many of his songs. It is in “Same Love” that he raps about a social issue that the world has been dealing with since, some could argue, the beginning of time. In the song “Same Love” he uses his rap to speak to everyone who can make a change in this world. “Same Love” by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis bring awareness to the unjust issue of homophobia by giving people the information they need to obtain a voice and stand up for humans who have had their rights stolen.
Derek Walcott is a poet, playwright, writer, and visual artist from Castries, Saint Lucian. Methodism and spirituality play a symbolic role in Walcott 's work. From his native Caribbean to Italy, Spain, England, the Netherlands, and the United States, Walcott meditates on the passage of time, fallen empires, bygone love affairs, and mortality. His work merges together an assortment of different models including the folktale, morality play, allegory, fable and has many mythological characters. In 1992, he was awarded the Noble Prize of Literature and in 2011 he won the T.S Elliot Prize for white egrets. Walcott’s poem Love after Love speaks about self-love. It personifies love by making love sound as if it were an actual person. A free written verse that speaks about self-identity, the importance of reconnecting yourself, never forgetting, and self-recognition that without the love for oneself, one cannot love anyone else.
Eavan Boland’s poem “Love” comes from her collection entitled In a Time of Violence. In the piece Boland both reflects on the history of her and her husband’s love and ties it in with the story of a hero who travels to hell. The poem’s form is stanzaic, broken into 7 stanzas with 38 lines. “Love” is rich with metaphor, simile, personification and imagery. The poem makes constant allusion to Greek Mythology, and the author’s story runs parallel to that of Odysseus from Homer’s “The Odyssey” . Boland is able to convey the journey loves take throughout the course of a relationship and how it is affected during difficult times.
A woman is dressed in a ballroom dress waiting to be asked to dance when she notices the prince. A fine gentlemen that pranced toward the fair lady. They exchanged greetings and slowly moved to the dance floor. He looked into her eyes and announced that she is the rarest creature to walk this planet. A week passed and they are to be married. They lived happily ever after. Now don’t we all wish love was a fairy tale story like that? Here in reality, love has more depth than just looking into some fair maiden’s eyes.