Is love desireable or destructive? In “A Love Song” by William Carlos Williams, words are shown as a destructive force while in “Love’s Philosophy” by Percy Bysshe Shelley, love is portrayed as something everyone desires. In “A Love Song”, love seen as undesirable and as a destructive force and is symbolically destroying the world, while in “Love’s Philosophy”, love is seen as most desirable, even in nature. While both poems have different themes, both convey the theme using a mixture of diction, imagery, and figurative language. William Carlos Williams suggests that love is painful and destructive while Percy Bysshe Shelley suggests that love is the most desireable. Both authors convey their messages in the poems by using appropriate diction, imagery, and figurative language to more easily display to the readers how love affects them.
The authors convey the theme using diction by choosing words with positive and negative connotations accordingly. Williams uses words such as “stain” and “spoiling” (Williams 5, 17) to describe the negative effects of love. These words generally cause disgust so using these words will allow him to convey his message of love being painful and undesirable. Shelley uses words such as “sweet” which has a more positive connotation. The use of words
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For example, Williams describes a “stain of love” (Williams 5) and several other effects. The use of a stain shows that Williams has been negatively affected by love, and that the effects are long lasting. Shelley shows how love is desirable by using nature and gives examples of how everything is in pairs, such as how “waves clasp one another “ (Shelley 10). The use of pairs shows that everything should have something else with it and also expresses how people should desire love. While imagery is important in conveying a message, figurative language is also
Williams uses dry and subtle words such as “car”, “coffee”, or even plain “water” to create this powerful and foreboding poem which is interpreted pessimistically after getting past the tedious words. Its implicit meaning can be hard to grasp because it is deeply embedded into the poem and also implies the opposite of what we are taught as humans; we grow up with plans, goals, desires too, and Williams opens the reader’s eyes to explain the pointlessness of it all. Williams writes this poem knowing he will contradict everything people learn to do starting from a young age. In spite of this, it may inspire readers to stop worrying about the small things and focus on the grand scheme, maybe get them “wanting to love beyond this meat and bone,” despite its adverse meaning (21). Ultimately, the author subduedly goes against the ideal rules of life and allows the reader to interpret it however they want- either explicitly understand that it is normal for humans to want thing, not want things, and be wanted, or implicitly understand that there is no point in investing in our desires, for when we die, our goals- both the finished and unfinished- will not matter in the
...xperiences of their readers. The poems express critical and serious issues that surround the heartfelt childhood memories of the readers. The surrounding circumstances and situations are different in each household. The readers are personally drawn to feel expressions of abuse, emotional issues and confusion as the poets draw them into a journey through their own personal life experiences from childhood to adulthood. These experiences are carried throughout a person’s life. Readers are somewhat forced to immediately draw themselves closer to the characters and can relate to them on a personal level.
film music. On the one side there are the purists, who cry foul at the piecing together of
Moreover, there are different types of love, and in this case, both authors describe the love of their characters as something unconditional and genuine. Sometimes it does not have any explanation of what people feel when they are in love. Indeed, both poems portray the same idea of an endless love. Also, both poets describe how their characters are fighting distance and proving that their love is pure and sincere. As a result, both attempt to prove that love is the most powerful thing in the entire world, and their goal is to show that
Both poets want to be loved in the poems in their own way. While both poem’s present a theme of love, it is obvious that the poet’s view on love changes from how they view love at the beginning of the poem from how they see it at the end.
Williams does away with traditional poetic structure in order to free the actual poetry inherent in the sounds and meanings of words. In his poetry, he offers a lesson in aesthetics regarding how to engage his poetry as a way of looking at reality. At the literal level, his poetry speaks self-reflexively about its significance: "It is hard to get the news from poems, yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there." His poetry attempts to re-engage people in reality. As he contends: "Anything is good material for poetry. Anything"(Paterson V). This belief is evidenced in a passage from "Two pendants: for the Ears":
To show their audience that their appreciation for nature is very strong and dear, both authors use diction to describe the beauty and feeling of being surrounded by nature. In his poem, William
To express this Shakespeare uses symbolism, imagery, and tone to craft his poem. Love, Hate, and any other emotions associated with them are tricky and decisive, and authors use many literary techniques to craft their writings to portray them.
When reading the title, we often associate a love song as something jaunty, pleasureable, and celebrating, or its other extreme, regretting, nostalgic, and full of pity for the singer’s troubles in love. With Williams the singer, the main idea revolves around the concept of an incomplete union in first person point of view, which makes the reading more personal as the reader is using I instead you or he. From this concept stem the ideas that this poem is about hopelessness or happiness, communal sex or masturbation. Delving into history, literary techniques, association with the author, and own opinion of it, there is easily more to it than meets the eye.
On the other side, “Love Poem” is very different from the previous poem. This seven stanza poem is based on a man describing the imperfections of his lover. In this, the speaker uses stylistic devices, such as alliteration and personification to impact more on reader, for example as the speaker shows “your lipstick ginning on our coat,”(17) ...
...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.
The types of love in a poem can be reflected in many ways. One of
“I was not aware of how much vital energy had gone into this struggle until the struggle was removed” (A Streetcar Named Desire). Williams struggled as a child which helped him began his writing career. William’s grew up during the Great Depression, the many changes of presidents, and a fire that change work policy everywhere in the United States. A Streetcar Named Desire brought him great success.
Will's beloved is "more lovely and more temperate (18.2)" than a summer's day; "the tenth Muse (38.9);" "'Fair,' 'kind,' and 'true' (105.9);" the sun that shines "with all triumphant splendor (33.10)." We've heard all this before. This idealization of the loved one is perhaps the most common, traditional feature of love poetry. Taken to its logical conclusion, however, idealized love has some surprising implications.
Love can be conveyed in many ways. It can be expressed through movements, gestures or even words on a paper. In William Shakespeare’s poems, “Sonnet 18” and “Sonnet 130,” both revolve around the idea of love, but are expressed in a different ways in terms of the mood, theme and the language used.