Philip Larkin and Dannie Abse have very different and contrasting attitudes to relationships. On the whole, Larkin presents the concepts of love and marriage as very superficial and meaningless, whereas Abse appears to be less such nihilistic and more open and positive about such topics. Throughout Wild Oats, Philip Larkin uses various literary techniques, such as imagery, structure and symbolism to convey certain aspects of love and the passing of time. Larkin's poetry often relates to the social and cultural views upon love and marriage in his time. In Wild Oats It explains that a person, over the course of time, comes to realise that his greatest desires of love, are unattainable, and second best things will have to suffice.
Firstly, Donne's poetry is highly distinctive and individual, adopting a multitude of images. The poem offers elaborate parallels between apparently dissimilar things, “Then as th’ earth’s inward narrow crooked lanes, Do purge sea water’s fretful salt away,” (Donne, Lines 6-7) Donne's poem expresses a wide variety of emotions and attitudes, as if Donne himself were trying to define his experience of love through his poetry. Although, “The Triple Fool” gives a limited view of Donne’s attitude towards love, Donne treats the poem as a part of experience, giving insight into the complex range of experiences concerning love and grief, “I thought, if I could draw my pains through rhyme's vexation, I should them allay.” (Donne, Lines 8-9) Overall, the imagery in “The Triple Fool,” contributes to Donne’s sorrowful diction of love and grief. Moreover, Donne explains that poetry is for love and grief, and not for pleasing things, but songs make love and grief even worse. The first verse of the poem states that he is two times a fool, a fool for loving, and a fool for admitting it, “I am two fools, I know, for loving, and for saying so in whining poetry.” (Donne, Lines 1-3) Donne follows to say that he would still not be wise, even if “she” (Donne, Line 5) returned his love.
Sonnet 138 In sonnet 138 the speaker focuses on a central relationship with his mistress candidly revealing that it is based on lust and their round acceptance of deception among them. Both he and she lie together, about her infidelity and his age. The piece is crafted by the poets use or puns, paradoxes, a candidly accepting tone and misleading diction. The sonnet concludes with a final couplet that according to Vendler “ends where it begins”, by the two continually lying to one another. The main conflict in the poem is shown prominent in the first 2 lines of the first quatrain, -“When my love swears that she is made of truth, I do believe her although I know she lies”, obviously the speaker is trying to express that his mistress is lying about something and he knows, yet he accepts that.
It also has iambic pentameter, its rhymed iambic pentameter lines, like its dramatic setup, remind us of Shakespeare’s plays and other Elizabethan drama. But it is about the inner thoughts of an individual speaker, instead of a dialogue between more than one person. It also shows the idea of a marriage and how there is standard life that people at this time followed, everything was simply laid out in front of them there was one way only for relationships to go. The writer for valentine uses very unusual language to express his ideas. He says “I give you an onion”, this is considered abstract symbolism because he is taking something that is never associated with love and claiming it to be more meaningful than “a cute card or a kissogram”, he sees them as cliché and not real.
And it effects an appeal, if an ironic one indeed, to the reader’s wariness. He anticipates—or pretends to—the reader’s suspicions, as if a reader might challenge him, saying, “Oh, so you’re only making this proposal because you can profit by it!” Here a discussion of the piece as both effective argument and satire would be fruitful. 12. By publishing such an outrageous text, what might Swift have hoped to bring about among the people of Ireland? * Clearly Swift would not be as innocent or fatuous as to think his proposal would solve the problem he addresses.
Write about the ways Browning tells the story in ‘Porphyria’s Lover’. Browning uses a multitude of techniques to tell the story in ‘Porphyria’s Lover’. These include language techniques like, similes, metaphors, nature imagery repetition and pathetic fallacy; the form of the poem, including the rhyme scheme and iambic tetrameter; and the structure of the poem, like the amount of stanzas or power struggle between Porphyria and her lover. Browning uses form to tell the story in ‘Porphyria’s Lover’. He does this by giving the poem an ABABB rhyme scheme.
The poem’s theme appears to be about unrequited love and a man wooing his “coy mistress” to sleep with him, but this poem does has a deeper meaning, which is really impressive and therefore is striking. The theme of mortality is highlighted in this poem through word choice and by using imagery which reinforces the idea of death. Words relating to death such as “ ashes” and “grave” are used to emphasise the lack of time that we have and the stark contrast between the slow, idyllic first stanza and the sped up, heavier second stanza shows the difference between the idealistic eternity and the reality that we are all mortal and have to die at some point. Another deeper theme introduced is the idea of “carpe diem” which is shown through the lustier language in the poem, word choice such as “time devour”, and also through the quickened pace of the second stanza. The speaker is not simply asking the “coy mistress” to sleep with him, what he is saying is if there was all the time in the world then life would be ideal but there is not so they have to live for the moment.
Year 9 English – Writing Task – Week 7 Many poets use figurative language throughout their poems, thus giving their texts an illusion of different meaning and ideas, creating a poem that is more complex than it seems. The poems “Ione, Dead The Long Year” and “Astigmatism” both include hidden messages and illusions, which can be interpreted accordingly by the reader, showing that the simplest of actions can become the starting point for the most complex of poems. The poem, “Ione, Dead The Long Year” is about a spiritual journey of a man who is mourning the loss of someone who was close to him, thus revealing the subject of the poem. A deeper insight into Passage 1 (Ione, Dead The Long Year) shows the character to be going through a phase of melancholia – compared to the phase of blinding anger that the character of Passage 2 (Astigmatism) is going through on his spiritual journey. By analysing the two poems and their complex structures, the reader discovers a similarity on the subject, of spiritual journeys, however a difference in the context of the journey.
Time is of the essence: break down of “To His Coy Mistress” by Andrew Marvell The poem, “To His Coy Mistress” by Andrew Marvell, is considered a carpe diem (meaning seize the day) kind of poem. The author really gets into the character of a man trying in vain to convince a young lady to engage in a sexual relationship with him. His motivation appears to be animal like desire rather than true love. The man in the poem is a very passionate guy.. The persuasion used in this poem is very aggressive with clear intentions.
The argument concludes with the claim that, despite the supposed infallibility, people are often mistaken in their moral judgements. This would seem like a coherent argument if one took infallible to mean unchanging and constant, as the subjectivist mind would likely move around in moral viewpoint throughout a life and loose its constancy. However, subjectivism suggests that simply the action of believing and thinking a moral claim renders it true, regardless of whether one abandons such an outlook moments