Relationships

Hour : - About an hour between narrator and her lover.

          - Poem personifies time as lover's enemy, but in this perfect moment love   almost manages to stop time.

 Sonnet 43 :   - Speaker expresses her intense love for he husband-to-be.

                     - She  loves him so deeply that she sees their love as spiritual and sacred.

                     - She counts all the different ways in which she loves him.

                     - Her  love is so great that she believes that she will love him even after death.

The Manhunt :   - Its written as if spoken by the wife of a soldier who has returned from war with physical scars caused by a bullet which ricocheted through his body.

                          - More difficult to see and understand are the mental scars which these experiences have left him with and the these are causing.     

Sonnet 116 : - Expresses how constant true love is.

                     - Love cannot be shaken, even when people change - if it is real, genuine love, then it doesn't change when circumstances change. 

                     - He says that if what he says isn't true, then he never wrote anything and no man has ever been in love. Since we know he did write, and men do love he's saying his words on love are true.

Nettles :   - A 3 year old boy falls into a bed of nettles and is badly stung.

                - His father comforts him, then goes out and cuts down and burns the nettles.

                 - 2 weeks later they have grown back. This simple event is used to explore suffering and the powerlessness of parents to stop their children from getting hurt in life.

                 - The physical pain of the nettles has a deeper meaning of the emotional suffering which the father knows his son will have to experience in life. His inability to destroy the nettles is a metaphor for the fact that the father can't protect his son from the pains of living.

To His Coy Mistress : - The narrator is telling the woman he loves that she shouldn't play hard to get and want to be wooed and flattered and given the presents - there isn't time.

                                   - He says they should enjoy each other whilst they are young and attractive. He tries lots of different arguments to persuade her.            

The Farmer's Bride : - A farmer has been married for 3 years but his bride is frightened of men.

                                  - In the poem he thinks about this, telling the story of how the relationship went wrong. He doesn't blame himself. He desires his wife. 

                                  - Her rejection of him is almost unbearable for him but he expresses his thoughts in a fair way. By the end it seems he may be struggling to resist taking her by force.

Sister Maude : - The poem is written through the eyes of  a character who was having a love affair. The narrator kept the affair secret from her parents, but her sister told them about it.

                         - The writer is particularly abusive and harsh to her sister for this and for the death of her lover. 

Born Yesterday : - This is an occasional piece [Sally Amis, daughter of his friend Kingsley Amis]

                            - He takes the fairy-tale idea of giving out wishes of good things to a newborn, but adds a twist to it by declaring his wish is not for great beauty and exciting things. Instead he wishes her more practical, useful talents. 

In Paris With You : - The speaker in the poem is upset about love. She sees himself as a victim following the breakdown of a relationship.

                               - She's gone to Paris with someone else, but still seems unhappy and discontented. She doesn't want to go out into the city - she'd rather stay in the hotel room.

Quickdraw : - This poem compares the phone call and texts in a relationship to a gun fight in a Western.

                     - The narrator of the poem seems to get the worst of these encounters, and is left hurt and wounded.

                     - What finally finishes the narrator off isn't cruelty but a series of text message kisses which strike her like bullets.

Ghazal : - In this poem the writer expresses intense feelings of love.

              - She conjures up a new image, or number of images, in each stanza.

Brothers : - In the poem the narrator remembers a moment from his childhood. He and his elder brother are given the responsibility of looking after their younger brother for the afternoon.                                 

                - They are exasperated with him - but excited to be out on their own.                                 

                - They send their younger brother back to get his bus fare from their mother. But then they run on, leaving him behind.

Praise Song For My Mother : - The poem brings up different aspects of a mother- daughter relationship, showing how the mother was like a complete world to her child. 

                                               - The mother is likened to water, the moon (night), sunrise (day) and food - a mixture of the necessities of life along with the daysand nights in which it's lived.

Harmonium : - The narrator and his father are picking up a harmonium that he's bought of cheaply from a chuch.

                     - He reflects on how the passage of time has affected the instrument -  and the years of service it has given in the church.

                     - His father is helping him take the harmonium away. His father makes a joke about death which seems to make the narrator uncomfortable.