Ordinarily, Valentine’s Day conjures up images of exchanging flowers, chocolates, cards, and so on and so forth for most people, except Carol Ann Duffy, who buys her lover’s Valentine’s Day gift in the produce aisle of her local grocery store, an onion. In her poem appropriately titled, “Valentine,” she challenges her lover to adopt her what she deems a realistic notion that if one has true love for another, romance can be found in any gift, even something as unromantic as an onion. In order to convey the message that gifts of love are subjective and do not have to align with tradition; she uses an extended metaphor to compare her love to an onion throughout the poem.
From its beginning, Duffy demonstrates her rejection of traditional Valentine’s Day
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She is referencing the way lovers are often considered “blinded” by love and unable to see the faults of their partner in the same way that an onion will make one’s eyes tear up and cause temporary “blindness” in an individual. Duffy reinforces this idea in stanzas nine and 10: “It will make your reflection / A wobbling photo of grief” meaning the tears of both love and those of an onion distort one’s vision when they are in love.
To build upon her argument that an onion is the perfect symbol of love, she bluntly states to her lover in stanzas 14-17: “Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips / Possessive and faithful / As we are / For as long as we are.” Onions have a long-lasting aftertaste and its strong smell usually will linger on ones breath in the same way that passionate emotions left by a lover’s kiss can linger long after your lover has stopped kissing you. Duffy wants her lover to know that his kiss is so “fierce” that it takes “possession” of her mind and heart resulting in an everlasting and faithful
That thing in the Dumpster--and he refused to call it human, let alone a baby--was nobody's business but his and China's. That's what he'd told his attorney, Mrs. Teagues, and his mother and her boyfriend,and he'd told them over and over again: I didn't do anything wrong. Even if it was alive, and it was, he knew in his heart that it was, even before the state prosecutor represented evidence of blunt-force trauma and death by asphyxiation and exposure, it didn't matter, or shouldn't have mattered. There was no baby. There was nothing but a mistake, a mistake clothed in blood and mucus. When he really thought about it, thought it through on its merits and dissected all his mother's pathetic arguments about where he'd be today if she'd felt as he did when she was pregnant herself, he hardened like a rock, like sand turning to stone under all the pressure the planet can bring to bear. Another unwanted child in an overpopulated world? They should have given him a medal. (623)
...s that he is “pure onion/ Of outside and in, surface and secret core.” (8-9) stating that there was no secrets to him, which was contrary to the person he was addressing. The onion was real in how he presented itself; very wise and assertive but the person was lost in her imagined truths, seeking an existence not possible. The constant war between the two was a result of the essence of love and the definition each character believed it to be. I presume the onion was trying to articulate his depression. He uttered that if he was causing a great deal of pain to the person then maybe they shouldn’t be together. The person’s definition of love, he could not fulfill and by the end of the poem both were mentally exhausted. The person had taken everything out of the onion and at the same time the person had lost everything that defined her for the sake of finding love.
The title of the poem “Love is Not All” asserts the impression that suggests the unimportant of love to its reader at first. However, the ending of the poem reveals the ironic truth that love is worthwhile. Millay’s intention is not to confuse readers by using a title that forcefully disrespects love. However, she projects the title of the poem to ascertain the grounds for her argument that love is important. The first six lines of the poem highlight the incompetence of love when compares with the basic supplies for life.
In the poem Mrs Lazarus it talks about how love can be so powerful it has driven her mad. After her fiancé died she talks about how she has “wept for a night and day”, “crawled at the burial stones till my hands bled, retched his name over and over again, dead, dead”. I think this may mean that when her fiancée died she was so heartbroken that it has driven her mad.
Love plays an important role in most physical and emotional relationships. Love is a word that can prove difficult to define or even compare to other emotions. This is due to the diversity of meaning and the complexity of the emotion itself. Everyone has been in love at least once before and has gotten a taste of all the good and bad things that come with it. Christina Rossetti’s “Song” presents some of the good parts of love while Philip Larkin’s “Talking in Bed” shows us some of the bad parts of love. Larkin’s poem presents a failing relationship where communication has failed between a couple and things are getting more and more difficult. Rossetti’s poem presents a wholly different view on love; it is told from the viewpoint of someone talking to his or her lover about what said lover should do after the speaker dies. The love between them seems better, more powerful and good. The two poems also present wholly different attitudes towards “The End,” whether that is the end of life or the end of the relationship. Larkin presents the end as something dark and sad, difficult to cope with. Rossetti, on the other hand, talks about the end as just another beginning, a chance to start over in a new world. Finally, the two poems represent remembrance in different ways. Larkin’s presents memory as something extremely important while Rossetti implies that it does not matter whether we remember or not.
Has there ever been a time where you have experienced true love, but everything was not what you expected? You thought everything was at the forefront but there was a deeper meaning to things. Well in the poem “First Love: A Quiz”, A.E. Stallings introduces you to the deeper side of things. This poem doesn’t consist of many literary devices, but Stallings uses her choice of words to make the reader give thought to the text, and to the story being told of Persephone and Hades. The structure of the poem also helps to better understand the actual meaning of the poem. As you read this “quiz” everything gets very abstract and your options become harder and harder to choose from.
Relationships between two people can have a strong bond and through poetry can have an everlasting life. The relationship can be between a mother and a child, a man and a woman, or of one person reaching out to their love. No matter what kind of relationship there is, the bond between the two people is shown through literary devices to enhance the romantic impression upon the reader. Through Dudley Randall’s “Ballad of Birmingham,” Ben Jonson’s “To Celia,” and William Shakespeare’s “Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?” relationships are viewed as a powerful bond, an everlasting love, and even a romantic hymn.
Authors use poetry to creatively present attitudes and opinions. “A Man’s Requirements,” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and “A Letter to Her Husband, Absent upon Public Employment” are two poems with distinct attitudes about love that contain different literary approaches. In both of the poems, love is addressed from a different perspective, producing the difference in expectation and presentation, but both suggest the women are subservient in the relationships.
These three metaphors exemplify beauty, but also an end to nature and life. Death is slowly creeping up to him and taking over his life as realized in this comparison of him to nature. The poem shows the need to seize the moment in life before death. The last couplet talks about the topic of love and the power of it. Love lasts through the struggles in life, and the changes of seasons. Love of life keeps us from realizing that an end will eventually come. “This thou perciev’st, which makes thy love more strong.” Encompasses the idea that although everything comes to an end, love still fuels everything within a person. He realizes everything will come to an end and death is inevitable but the passion is still
How does one define a perfect match? Society defines two equally attractive individuals as perfectly matched, and that a woman’s beauty defines her attractiveness. In “Litany,” Collin’s speaker presents and describes a true, unconditional and unequally relationship as a picture-perfect puzzle. The speaker names characteristics and attributes that his lover lacks while also listing others attributes in as backhanded manner. While using “you” the speaker portrays and addresses his lover with unusual comparisons and with ordinarily undesirable. He describes himself more attractively and the fact that despite his superior characteristics, he still needs and loves her. Many of his comments are backhanded with double meanings. “Litany” much like Shakespeare’s, “My Mistress’s Eyes Are Nothing Like Sun,” mocks the perfection and romantic idealism of love. Through metaphors, an effective use of syntax, structure, and contrast, Collins effectively conveys humorous satire towards traditional love poems while describing a view of a perfect match.
This change in mental state accounts for the change in language from the unflattering descriptions early on to the more loving and affectionate feelings expressed later in the poem. This continued consumption of alcohol results in the speaker 's proclamation of love -- a state defined as "rare" because it will most likely be gone in the morning. It is clear in the poem that the speaker 's complex maze of attraction and derision is cyclic, transforming the unattractive innkeeper to the prized jewel of his eye on a weekly or perhaps daily basis. Through the clever use of negative descriptions and false comparisons, the author confides to paper what is effectively a bipolar relationship with the woman he both loathes and
In the poem the character asks, “Wasn't I beautiful?” The character is clearly in anguish from the heartbreak and begins to compare her current appearance to that of which she used to be. Her sadness and loneliness. Usually in real life, a victim of something either has a traumatic emotional change in appearance or possibly a physical change in appearance. Following that statement, Duffy writes, “There are bullet tears in my eyes.” One can infer that “bullet tears” refer to both fast and hard tears further illustrating the characters deep pain and sadness occurring from her lover's betrayal. Her sadness relates to that of which many people in today’s society face due to heartbreak resulting in high percentages in
Valentine’s Day is fast approaching and what better way than celebrating in London where there are a plethora of options to woo your loved ones or spend some quality time with each other. This year when you are looking forward to make the moment come alive or propose your loved one try to be at the most beautiful places in London and make it a memorable evening.
Wright is renown for her use language, and many of her poems contain paradoxes in which the reader is confronted with a phrase completely unrealisable, but effective in portraying the nature of the poem. “The Company Of Lovers” itself opens with the use of a paradox “…We meet and part now…” instils an image of simultaneous unity and depart, evoking in a sense of temporary cohesion that may soon be lost. This may represent a changing nature of ‘lovers’ and perhaps such a quick meeting and farewell represents the promiscuous nature of some who class themselves as ‘lovers.’