The poem “The Flea” by John Donne is a funny poem showing that something as small as a flea can be compared to premarital sex. The flea, which is made to seem insignificant throughout the poem, is taken on a “sex” journey without ever even knowing it. The poem maintains one speaker until the end, but interesting enough, has two significant characters: the speaker and his lover. The audience is the speaker’s lover, yet she has a major role that goes beyond listening. While he is trying to convince his female lover to see that her virginity isn’t all that it’s hyped to be (insignificant), he compares a flea to sex in the process. He describes the flea as insignificant, yet the poem is mainly based on this tiny insect. By doing this, the speaker contradicts himself and gives the “insignificant flea” importance and does so throughout the poem. Ultimately by comparing the flea to his lovers “insignificant” virginity, he shows that by trying to convince her to give it up, he essentially gives her the power to make the final decision: whether to have sex or not, giving her importance even without a voice. Therefore, by trying to convince her through his speech to give up her “maidenhead” and give him “power,” he ultimately puts her “on top” with all the power by pestering her and essentially being unsuccessful in his attempts to woo her. In the poem “The Flea,” we can already see that the main subject of the poem, the flea, is given more importance than is let on. “Flea” is capitalized, when it could have easily been a lowercase f. This automatically catches the reader’s attention due to the fact that most words that are capitalized are important objects or places; in this case, the flea is a significant object and strangely eno...
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...t to lose her virginity. Even though the speaker is dominant in words, he is dominated in power. While he continues to rant and rave about her virginity and sex throughout the entire poem, she holds the final decision: She kills the flea and kills his chance of sleeping with her. The ball starts of in her court because he wants to have sex with her and this ball remains in her court until the final stanza. Throughout the poem, she maintains control and remains “on top.” Despite her lack of words, she is very important, just as the flea is in making the speaker’s comparison. The woman shows strength through her actions and by maintaining her own willpower. She has the power in the relationship and even though the speaker uses the clever metaphor of the flea, he ultimately fails in wooing her. Therefore, the lover, even without a voice, is “on top” in “The Flea.”
"Daniel Orozco-Department of English-University of Idaho." Daniel Orozco-Department of English-University of Idaho. N.p., n.d. Web. . .
Everett, Nicholas From The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-century Poetry in English. Ed. Ian Hamiltong. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. Copyright 1994 by Oxford University Press.
The speakers and audience in poem are crucial elements of the poem and is also the case in these poems. In the poem Untitled, it can be argued that the poem is being written by Peter based on what his father might say to him...
Stated in the first metaphor of the poem, “How do they do it, the ones who make love without love? Beautiful as dancers, gliding over each other like ice skaters” (lines 1-3) captures an image of two lovers gliding over one another like an abstract artistic painting in a simile. The cold atmosphere indicates the disdain detachment between the lovers during the experience. In modern society, many believe in the “no strings attached” method as part of a liberation for one’s self. Yet, Olds creates a paradox in the imagery by describing the people “red as steak, wine, wet as the children at birth whose mothers are going to five them away” (lines 6-8). In literal concept, the images display a child birth after an eventful sexual experience. When a child enters the world, it comes responsibility many young adults don’t care to handle, thus creating a narcissistic for the younger generation. Nevertheless, the syntax, form, and tone are broken down as Olds further answers her frustrations to society. A tonal shift reverted any ambiguities about these faceless sexual beings by describing them as “the ones who will not accept a false Messiah, love the priest instead of the God” (lines 15-16). Without the great
... to understand one another. Furthermore, while both poets encase aspects of the fish into their poems, Bishop’s interpretation of the fish places it at a distance because her block of text loaded with descriptions is how she sees the fish, which gives the image that she just feels pity for the fish but doesn’t really feel the need to delve deeper in understanding the essence of the fish. By contrast, Oliver’s interpretation of the fish embodies its’ essence because she does not rely on its appearance to understand it but rather when she consumes the fish, its’ spiritual aura merges within herself. Oliver captures the soul of the fish within her poetic writing as evidenced by the constant alliteration with “f” letter words including, “first fish”, “flailed” , “flesh”, “fall”, “feed”, and “feverish”, which give the image that the poem is alive and is the fish.
The essence of this poem is the author’s mastery of sound and rhythm and his excellent use of figurative language. Richard Wilbur purposely chose words that have few a syllables and require little to no change in mouth size and tongue movements to appease to the reader when read aloud. There is an ABAB rhythm scheme
Not only does this personification alter the pace of the poem, but the fact that the woman’s breasts – important sexual organs and symbols of female sexuality – are portrayed as sleeping conveys a lack of arousal and general desire, particularly on the behalf of the woman. This sense of a lack of desire between the gypsy and the woman is communicated later in the poem through the description of the characters’ undressing before they begin to have sex:
In the stage being the first stanza of the poem Child and Insect the reader meets a little boy who is excited and euphoric because he has managed to catch a grasshopper. The rhythm of the poem is very fast and lively. An evidence for that is the onomatopoeia “clockwork fizz” which describes the insect’s movements as sudden and quick, comparing its legs to the hands of a clock too. It also illustrates its desperate attempts to escape the small palm of the boy described by the opening line of the first stanza “He cannot hold his hand huge enough.” Furthermore, not only the grasshopper’s movements are swift but the boy’s motions as well, shown by the run on line “He races back, how quick he is, look”. This line further emphasizes the rhythm of the poem and the energetic mood it creates. The run on line could also be interpreted as a representation of the child’s speech which is cut and uneven because of his cheerfulness and need for a breath. Moreover, the word choices of the author particularly words such as “snatched”, “quick”, “look”, “sudden” help to reinf...
In poetry, the speaker is not necessarily the author but is the voice of the poem that conveys his or her situations or emotions. In the beginning of the poem, the speaker meets her ex lover “after all these years” (Kizer line 1). Kizer uses an extended metaphor of the speaker’s inner self as a dog, more specifically, a female dog, which explains the title, “Bitch”. The speaker’s inner bitch reveals emotions of being wounded, furious, and affectionate towards her former lover all at once. The speaker is miserable in how she has to hold back the dog. She says, “as I drag you off by the scruff” (Line 33). This gives the reader the imagery of a dog being pulled away from something the dog aspired to do, illustrating the miserable and wounded tone. The speaker is
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.
The metaphysical era in poetry started in the 17th century when a number of poets extended the content of their poems to a more elaborate one which investigated the principles of nature and thought. John Donne was part of this literary movement and he explored the themes of love, death, and religion to such an extent, that he instilled his own beliefs and theories into his poems. His earlier works, such as The Flea and The Sunne Rising, exhibit his sexist views of women as he wrote more about the physical pleasures of being in a relationship with women. However, John Donne displays maturity and adulthood in his later works, The Canonization and A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning, in which his attitude transcends to a more grown up one. The content of his earlier works focused on pursuing women for his sexual desires, which contrasts heavily with his latter work. John Donne’s desire for physical pleasure subsides and he seeks to gain an emotional bond with women, as expressed in his later poetry.
The Flea and To His Coy Mistress are two poems written by poets living during the Renaissance Period. To His Coy Mistress was written by Andrew Marvell and The Flea was written by John Donne. Both of these poets were well-educated 'metaphysical poets', and these poems illustrate metaphysical concerns, highly abstract and theoretical ideas, that the poets would have been interested in. Both poems are based around the same idea of trying to reason with a 'mistress' as to why they should give up their virginity to the poet.
“The Fish,” written by Elizabeth Bishop in 1946, is perhaps most known for its incredible use of imagery, but this analysis does not merely focus on imagery. Instead, it is based on a quote by Mark Doty from his essay “A Tremendous Fish.” In it he says, “‘The Fish’” is a carefully rendered model of an engaged mind at work” (Doty). After reading this statement, it causes one to reflect more in-depth about how the poem was written, and not just about what its literal meaning lays out. In “The Fish,” Bishop’s utilization of certain similes, imagery in the last few lines, narrative poem style, and use of punctuation allows the audience to transport into the life of the fish; therefore, allowing them to understand Bishop’s ideas on freedom and wisdom.
...ove) " My echoing song; thenworms shall try that long perserved virginity/ And your qaint honer turned to dust/And into ashes all my lust". He is talking about rough sex. He wants to be involved with her physically instead of love which is lust thus stated in the last qoute.. Finally we come to the concluding point where feminists would call this guy a creep. Pleasure is the speaker's main concern. The body is definitely the speaker focus. He makes references to parts of her body. He talks about her eyes, her forehead, her breasts, the rest and every part.
In the first stanza of the poem, the speaker develops similarities between the fleabite and lovemaking. The first two lines of the poem, “Mark but this flea, and mark in this, How little that, which thou deny’st me, is;” I interpreted to mean that the woman doesn’t deny the flea access to her body, yet she denies the advancements of the speaker. Next the speaker uses conceit to illustrate the similarities between their lovemaking and the mingling of their blood within the flea. “Me is sucked first, and now sucks the, An in this flea our two bloods mingled be.” The speaker uses this argument to show the woman that the same physical exchange, which t...