In the poem “(love song, with two goldfish)” the love life of two individuals are portrayed as the lives of two fish. Their romance is failing as one lovers constant affection pushes the other away. In the end, one-sided love can only get them so far. The poet Grace Chua uses fish diction, strategically placed parentheses, and the symbol of the bowl in order to show how one's undying love can often leave them broken when their feelings are not reciprocated.
The poet uses diction to characterize the female lover as a fish, showing their playful, endearing nature, but also the physical limitations their love possesses. She has “scales”, “fish eyes,” and “kissy lips”(4,8,9). These are all the characteristics of a fish, making her seem unnatural and
…show more content…
This is done in order to show the broken up nature of this relationship. In the first four stanzas the poet has parenthesis around each. By doing so it sections each stanza off into its own singular entity. By breaking up each stanza with this curved shape it creates a visual representation of the lines being a bowl. The shape the parenthesis make is very similar to a bowl, and breaks up the flow in between each piece. The only area where this is broken is in the last stanza. The poet highlights the lines “(the reason, she said / she wanted)” (23-24) and the line “(and he could not give)” (25) since they are each in their own set of parenthesis. Since the parenthesis represent the bowl this shows that they are each in their own bowl. This is symbolic to an end in their relationship. The only line in the poem that is out of parenthesis is “a life / beyond the / (Bowl)” (26-27-28). When imagining a “life beyond”, the poet shows how it is free of any confines or limitations. Instead of breaking free from the bowls by supporting one another, they remain sheltered
Wetherell, W.D. "The Bass, the River, and Sheila Mant." Responding to Literature: Stories, Poems, Plays, and Essays. Fourth Edition. Ed. Judith A. Stanford. Boston: McGrawHill, 2003. 191-196.
of images and details about the fish, making it into not only a poem with a purpose, but
Within this poem there is underlying imagery, which further defines the dilemma of the play and the grievance of the Wife. The mandarin duck and the fish, or t...
Right from the first stanza, we can clearly see that the girl emphasizes her passionate feelings towards the boy by explaining how she desires to be close to her love. Moreover, she expresses the theme of love through using a narrative of how she is prepared to trap a bird. Apparently, this symbolizes how she is prepared to trap her lover’s feelings with the desire to live together all through her life. Additionally, the young lady emphasizes on her overall beauty, her beautiful hair, and clothing which is of the finest linen which she uses to attracts her lover’s attention (Hennessy & Patricia, p.
The last poem “The Fish” illustrates the sorrow of life itself. The skin, the blood, the entrails, everything of the fish depicts vividly and dramatically. The poet seems to share the same pain with the fish observing the scene and enjoys the detail just like enjoying an artwork. The poet lets the fish go because she is totally touched by the process between life and death; she loves life but meanwhile, is deeply hurt by the life. In the poem, the fish has no fear towards her; the desire to life is in the moving and tragic details when faces the
...to help express the theme of the poems by illustrating the role the subject matter played in the life of the persona during their grieving period. Furthermore, metaphors helped communicate the thoughts and feelings of the personas by providing the reader with insight into the relationships and emotions covert in the poem. All in all, the poetic devices incorporated in each individual poetic composition played vital roles in the emotional and dramatic impact of these poems. And who knows, the immaculate use of these fundamental literary devices could be the key to successful love poems all around the world.
I am reading “The Bass, the River, and Shelia Mant” by W.D. Wetherell, The story is about a young boy trying to choose between a beautiful girl and his passion of fishing. In this journal, I will be questioning and evaluating.
Literature shows us the changes of our society from time to time. It also gives us an idea about people, culture, politics, gender traditions, as well as an overall view of previous civilizations. As a part of literature, poetry introduces us to different cultures with different perspectives. Ancient Egypt and ancient China may differ in terms of culture, politics, economic stability, tradition, or even in religious belief. However, in poetry, especially in love lyrics both Egyptian and Chinese poems portray common area of describing women, social attitudes toward love, sexuality and the existence of romance or selfishness in relationships. . If we look at the Egyptian poem “My god, my Lotus” and the Chinese poem “Fishhawk”, we will see both poems have similarities in describing relationships. Also, they have the similarity of imagining the lovers and their expression of love toward each other. However, both poems have some significant differences in terms of representing female sexuality, gender disparity and the display of love.
In Wendy Cope’s poem, “Lonely Hearts”, the narrator is in search for love. The narrator gives a description in each stanza of people she would not mind finding love in. Abstract diction is used in this poem a lot because the narrator is looking for love. Love is not an object; however, it is an abstract idea. The narrator has a wish that they can find love soon. The narrator says, “Can someone make my simple wish come true?” (398). The use of the word “simple” is rather a strange choice of wording being that finding love is not normally described as simple. The narrator then illustrates the type of people she would not mind falling in love with. The descriptions of people are quite broad and show the narrator does not have much of a type.
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.
The speaker uses metaphors to describe his mistress’ eyes to being like the sun; her lips being red as coral; cheeks like roses; breast white as snow; and her voices sounding like music. In the first few lines of the sonnet, the speaker view and tells of his mistress as being ugly, as if he was not attracted to her. He give...
The poets integrated ?metaphysical conceits? as focal parts of these poems. Along with these, they used effective language as a basis for their convincing arguments, they included subjects of periodical importance (e.g. ?courtship? and ?religion?), and use very clever structures that are manipulated in order to make the poem read in the desired way. The very clear indication of the theme in question was strongly aided by the way in which the personas portrayed the emotions they felt and the way they showed their attitudes towards the subject. Considering all these factors, the poets made critical arguments to the mistresses in order to alter their views, thus changing their minds, on denying the poets the sex that they desired so strongly.
A poem without any complications can force an author to say more with much less. Although that may sound quite cliché, it rings true when one examines “The Fish” by Elizabeth Bishop. Elizabeth’s Bishop’s poem is on an exceedingly straightforward topic about the act of catching a fish. However, her ability to utilize thematic elements such as figurative language, imagery and tone allows for “The Fish” to be about something greater. These three elements weave themselves together to create a work of art that goes beyond its simple subject.
When Andrea leaves the bowl at home, it is assumed that she never places anything inside of it. It is described "in a way, it was perfect: the world cut in half, deep and smoothly empty" (74). Since Andrea's obsessive relationship with the bowl has caused her husband to leave her, the empty and loneliness in her life continues to prosper. She is being held confined of her past. All Andrea can really do now is contemplate "Beattie can fill the bowl, to use a metaphor, with whatever she chooses. She can capture, again and again, the story behind the "one small flash of blue, a vanishing point on the horizon" (Charles E May, 215). These quotes symbolizes that she has dealt with her past and has finally moved on. The understatement "the bowl was just a bowl. She did not believe that one second. What she believed was that it was something she loved"(73). She believed that the bowl was a fortune, that it gave her good luck. She also believed that it was a mystery of something she truly admires. In otherwise, "Andrea may feel such a deep connection to the bowl less because it represents the lost loves then because it reflects her own empty, passive condition"(Milne, 167). The connection Andrea is starting to feel towards the bowl starts to add up to the entire love one she has lost in her life, representing the lonely, submissive condition
In the poem “To His Coy Mistress”, the speaker is trying to seduce his wife. In the assumption the mistress is his wife; she is being bashful towards losing her virginity. The speaker, which is the mistress’s husband, develops a carefully constructed argument where the speaker seeks to persuade his lady to surrender her virginity to him.