Analysis Of The Rain By Robert Creeley

Love has the power to do anything. Love can heal and love can hurt. Love is something that is indescribable and difficult to understand. Love is a feeling that cannot be accurately expressed by a word. In the poem “The Rain” by Robert Creeley, the experience of love is painted and explored through a metaphor. The speaker in the poem compares love to rain and he explains how he wants love to be like rain. Love is a beautiful concept and through the abstract comparison to rain a person is assisted in developing a concrete understanding of what love is. True beauty is illuminated by true love and vice versa. In other words, the beauty of love and all that it entails is something true.

The author’s objective through writing this poem was to shed

Right after the line, “final uneasiness.” (16) the poem’s intended audience changes. The audience shifts from lovers and their experience with love to a more specific person/intended individual love to him. This is important to understand because it further demonstrates the emotions the speaker has. After the shift, the speaker says “Love, if you love me,/….Be for me, like rain,” (17-19). In this he is demanding that if someone wants to love him or be with him they need to be like rain. The image of rain falling outside is something simple and beautiful. Rain, to some people can be a calming sensation to feel on their cheeks. It is interesting how rain is used in a positive light to describe love because rain is not something one would typically assimilate to love. Rain is beautiful, like love, but to compare the two to illustrate a meaning is thought-provoking. Why would the speaker use rain to describe love? Possibly because it is beautiful like love and has characteristics one may desire in love? This may be true, but conversely it can be assumed that love is difficult to comprehend and that through the use of something out of the ordinary maybe some understanding of the abstract emotion can be facilitated. At the end of the poem the speaker leaves his intended audience with the final phrase of “Be wet/ with a decent happiness.” (23-24). This final phrase is significant because it tells the audience and those who desire

Love can be false or a lie, but if it is beautiful love, then it is also true. The poet enhances readers understanding of the values beauty and truth by illustrating in his poem how truth can be found through beauty. When the speaker in the poem talks about how he wishes love were like rain, he is exemplifying truth. Typically truth is something that is logical and that can be proven, but in this case truth is not something that is logical. Love is not logical, but it is still true. As stated earlier, truth can be found through beauty. In other words, for something to be undeniably beautiful then it has to be true. Love cannot be proven because it is a feeling and emotion. However, love can be felt, so therefore love is true. Things humans feel are true. It cannot be proven that someone can feel it but if that is what a person senses to be true then it is so. The pragmatic truth test supports these claims that love is true because the speaker of the poem believes his love to be true. In short, love is something that is beautiful and because it is beautiful it is likewise