Relationship Poems

Context:

• Duke Alfonso married three times
• No male heirs from children had. All wives died suspiciously
• Victorian Era: Repression

Language:

• Objectifying with Personal Pronouns "my last duchess" and metaphors "that piece"/"is my object"
• Jealous Imagination: "called a spot of joy" / "heart to soon made glad"

Structure + Form

• unrehersed speech (arrogance is habit) + loss of emotion control "or blush, at least. She thanked men- good! But thanked somehow- I know not how-"
• Constant Pentameter and Rhyme AABBCC = constant vanity
• Dramatic Monologue with only one stanza = self importance

• Looking as if she were alive
• Curtain
• Officious fool
• 900 year old name
• never to stoop

Context:

• Romantic Period 1770-1850
• wrote on political + social movement
• message: dangers with obssession

Language:

• warning, ominous tone: "they cried... thee hath in thrall!"
• Breaking down of relationships with seasons: "and no birds sing"
• hints about death "lily on thy brow" / "full beautiful- fairy's child" - also captivated in love

Structure + Form:

• Cyclical: "I sojourn here palely loitering" meaning he is trapped in his fate
• Tetrameter + ABCB + Quatrain = rhythmical = he's entranced 
• Ballad form to help get message + warning across easily

• Horrid warning gaped wide
• She looked at me as if she loved
• lulled me to sleep
• Fading rose
• Pale Kings, Princes too, Pale Warriors, death pale were they all

Context:

• Father died 1783 but published poem for him in 1790 = dad has turned to a grandfather now
• Romantic period: issue is on children losing the ones they lost

Language:

• Semantic field of Fraility: "old and frail" / "how lank and thin your beard" / "wan,hollow... cheeks"
• defensive child: "housewives... potions brew... gossip" - childlike imagery

Structure:

• Rhyme couplets with Tetrameter then Trimeter = strict structure = child only sees black/white
• break in rhyme in sestets 3,7,8 = child's emotion to accept death "cheeks...breaks"
• Present tense at start, Past in 2nd, Future in 5th = child comes to term with death.
• Lyrical Poem: personal 1st person emotions

• vexed to see you, sit beside you, love my old, why are you ailing, fill with cheer - DAD
• tell me how good children did
• say their prayers
• You love a story dad

Context:

• Addressed to husband Robert + 43rd/44 Sonnets written
• Breaks 19th century (1850) normalities and shows that women can declare love too
• Parents wouldn't allow marriage = autobiographical

Language:

• Capital letters: "Being... Ideal Grace... Right.... Praise..." = devoutly religious to love.
• Syndetic Listing: "depth and breadth and height" = so much to describe = vast love

Structure:

• Repetition of "I love thee" = persistent love and very powerful
• Punctuation: "how do i love thee?... count the ways!-" "Smiles, tears, of all my life!-" 
• ABBA rhyme + constant pentameter = perfect love BUT:

Form: Breaks Peterarchan Sonnet rules because she isn't constraining her love esp. w/ punct.

• In my old griefs
• With my lost saints
• I shall love thee better after death
• My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

Context:

• Romanticist (1807) and thought about how he was always challenged
• Affected by lost: Orphaned, lost 1st wife and 3 children
• Lost friend Sam Taylor Coleridge who took opium for poems = personality change

Language:

• Extended Metaphor: Water "Comfortless and hidden well" of unreachable water and friendship which is non flowing. Connotation: can't survive without water

Structure:

• Cyclical: "there is a change... -such a change" + contrast with past and present tense
• Punctuation Breaks: "a well of love- it may be deep- i trust that is, - and never dry:"

Form: ABABCC + couplet shows clear negative emotions + rhyme break = relationship break

• Tetrameter = seriousness of complaint and possibly monotonous = no more relationship

• Not long ago fountain at my fond heart's door... only business was to flow
• consecrated fount of murmuring, sparkling living love --> comfortless + hidden
• Waters sleep in silence + obscurity
• Hath made me poor

Context:

• Writes about a wife of a friend who seems so beautiful; respects that her "love is innocent."
• 1814 Romanticist that recognised his personal emotion influence and that heart > head

Language:

• alliteration + assonance: "cloudless climes and starry skies" = smooth feeling
• extended metaphor + simile: "like the night" = woman is one of a kind w/ original desc.
• antithesis: "one shade the more, one ray the less" = confusion in feelings to admit love

Structure:

• 3 sestets with ABABAB and tetrameter = regularity of walk but also faultless perfection BUT:
• enjambment: so much beauty; there's to much to describe that he can't pause for breath

Form: Lyrical Poem = w/ music + so in love he would want to sing his declaration.

• So soft, so calm, yet so eloquent
• A heart who's love is innocent
• Meet her in aspect and her eyes
• Smiles that win, tints that glow

Context:

• Famous for pessimistic writing
• Faced many disappointments with relationships
• Written 1867 but published 1887 to emphasise theme of memory

Language:

• Negativity Semantic Field: "eyes on me/rove" "smile...deadest thing" 
• Imagery with seasons: "pond that winter" "few leaves... fallen from an ash, and were gray" 

Structure:

• Cyclical: "face, god-curst sun, and a tree" can't come to terms and revisits memory in 1-3
• Uneven rhythm = uncomfortable relationship BUT even ABBA rhyme = speaker is forcing himself to feel neutral about this break down

Form: 4 quatrains = very controlled w/ couplet BB trapped in A-A = lack of love/hiding emotion

• words played between us to and fro 
• keen lessons that love deceives
• alive enough to have strength to die
• tedious riddles of years ago
• sun was white, few leaves lay on starving sod

Context:

• Deals social conventions of dating
• Witty humour 

Language:

• Semantic Field of Sight = importance of appearance + them looking @ eachother "glance" "appear" "half-dark"
• Cliches to show ordinary side "lost in the music" "face, it's a picture"

Structure:

• Short lines + tetrameter = speed and nervousness
• Irony: "trying hard to listen" "quite undistracted by me" = awkwardness

Form: 

• ABCB rhyme = it is working but still struggling esp with side by side poems= confusion

• She/I said... liked classical music
• In that dress she's very attractive
• A picture of rapt concentration
• Perhaps she's out of my league... impression that my brow was high
• Where are we? I'll have nothing to say.

Context:

• always addresses the overuse of sentimental love images
• from collection, 'Mean Time,' which explores unconventional forms of love + copies other poets who did the same

Language:

• Onion extended metaphor that has many layers to show depth of love "i give you an onion"
• simple cliche language + images: "red rose, satin heart, cute card, kissogram" with not so cliche images: "platinum loops... wedding ring" "moon wrapped in brown paper... like the careful ********** of love." "lethal, scent will cling to your knife"

Structure:

• Monosyllabic to get straight to point = not normal with love confession "Here." 
• goes from innocent to "lethal" = reveals her true self and obssession with crush.

Form: Free verse w/ irregular stanzas = not planned + not be restricted to conventions of love

• It will blind you with tears
• Reflection like a wobbling photo of grief
• Here. I'm trying to be truthful. I give you an onion. Take it... if you like.
• ...fingers, cling to your knife.

Context:

• Religious person, wrote on loss of faith in 1960s --> shown with loss of love here
• Biblical reference used with "one flesh" as did Adam and Eve

Language:

• semantic field of distance: "lying apart, separate bed, hardly ever touch" to describe struggling, emotionless relationship
• Juxtapose many ideas: "he with a book, her dreaming; little feeling- or too much; strangely apart yet close together; fire which i came has now grown cold."

Structure:

• rhyme ABCBAA, couplet in 1st two stanzas but not final = finally separated
• Constant Pentameter = serious subject

Form: - exactly 3 sestets to show very controlling relationship + no excitement.

• Books he holds unread
• Her eyes fixed on shadows overhead
• Tossed up like flotasm from former passion
• Chastity... a destination... whole lives were preparation
• Time is a feather... do they know they're old

Context:

• try to reduce complex ideas on love as a punk poet
• set to music to serenade the loved one 

Language:

• everyday objects like "vacuum, coffee pot, raincoat" to show lack of seriousness in love and immaturity.
• Colloquialism "i wanna be yours" rushing the poem but also the relationship

Structure:

• No punctuation: desperate to show love which could be impulsive of him
• Irregular rhyme + rhythm = deviate from norms but also show passionate but technically regular to each individual stanza except final + ABABCCCD = lose self control

Form: 2 octaves, one 13line stanza = desperation take over

• let me be your raincoat
• i will not run out, i dont care, i dont wanna be hers
• let me be your dreamboat, teddybear
• with deep devotion, deep as the deep atlantic ocean, thats how deep my emotion

Context:

• Response poem to Edwin Morgan's : "what i hate about love is its dog" which shows effort of love + deliberation needed

Language:

• Metaphors to show different aspects of love i.e:
• loves physical display of love : "what i love is its petting zoo and zookeeper- you"
• hates when its boring and dull: "i loate is its burnt toast and bonemeal"

Structure:

• Parallelism: its either "what i love or hate" to convey that there is emotions for both the positives and negatives... breaks when loathe is mentioned = hints her relationship right now
• Cyclical: stuck in regret "what i love, what i hate" doesn't know what to do with these feelings

Form: - no rhythm + 8 couplet rhyme = confused + unpredictable ideas show reality.

• diagnosis; prognosis
• mememe;  eatmedrinkme
• petting zoo; zookeeper you
• truth serum; shrink potion
• doubloons; birdbones
• boil-wash; spin-cycle
• burnt toast and bonemeal; bent cigarette
• pirate; sick parrot

Context:

• Fought + deserted army twice = experience would make him more agressive + lash out
• son was killed during war too = a very personal topic that could trigger his anger
• enlisted in 1940 at 18 years old = lost part of his childhood

Language:

• simple vocabulary mixes with semantic words of military: "green spears, regiment of spite, burn the fallen dead, tall recruits." "honing the blade" seems vengeful here.
• "my son" turns to "my boy" gets the reader to understand his pain
• "white blisters on skin" to tall recruits = zoom out panning = we see all of the intimacy

Structure + Form

• One stanza (so much to say) of 4 Quatrains with ABAB (disguises the very serious matter with a mundane situation and simple rhyme) and constant iambic pentameter (constant frustration) except "And went outside and slashed in fury with it" and rhyme with "... then i lit"

Context + ideas:

• Based on his documentary "the forgotten heroes" for PTSD of war - could show his pacifism
• Laura reads for Eddie in Bosnia - still recovering from 3 year war = scary 
• break off from Yugoslavia in 1990s =how conflict could lead to loss of allies and friendship

• Soldier doesnt want to show his weakness - difficult to "trace his scares back to the source" 
• Be patient and still love as wife "explores" his "grazed heart" (literal/figurative) w "foetus of metal" - foetus turns to a baby- changes one's life like how this injury will change theirs.

Language:

• "handle and hold, mind and attend, trace, explore" wife shows concern for him 
• "blown hinge of broken jaw" -> "climb rungs of his broken ribs" she was able to follow path

Structure+ Form:

• 13 Rhyme couplets w/ many failing+ no rhythm = fragmented, unstable mental state of man

Context:

• Rainer Rilke quote "which way do we face to talk to the dead" who writes about life, death and existence. 
• Very young when father died = very shocking for her
• 1948 - 94: apartheid in South Africa. Father could have been involved in political problems

Language:

• "fathers face, 5 days dead" "Inverted face" "wry smile, his half turned face" - still w/ her. Half turned = hiding secret like illness till he finally "turns away" showing death
• morgue is "cold in here" could be due to there being no life or world has become emotionless

Structure + form:

• Free verse to express deep sadness
• repetition of the title shows anger or frustration but turns into "could" = understand that his lack of emotions OR doesnt want to ruin last moments