Poetry responses
Sample Essay 1
The sonnet has long been used as a structure for poems of love and devotion. William Shakespeare and Elizabeth Barrett Browning both write sonnets on that very subject, yet their views on love could not vary more. Browning’s Petrarchan sonnet, “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways” has a speaker that is young and infatuated. She believes in eternity of love and the completeness of devotion. In sharp contrast, Shakespeare’s speaker in “That time of year thou may’st in me behold” has been through life and understands that love, much like life, will eventually come to an end. These two poets utilize the sonnet to discuss love, yet draw strikingly opposing conclusions.
In “That time of year thou may’st in me behold”, the speaker has clearly lived through most of his life. He is in the autumn of his years, which Shakespeare alludes to many times by choosing words and phrases such as “yellow leaves” and “twilight.” A sense of youth and light coming to the end emanates throughout the entire poem. Because the speaker is perceived as older and almost world weary, the reader seems to believe, quite strongly, that as he closely ebbs to the winter of life, his passion will recede. In this poem he is preparing his lover for the end. “In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire/ that on ashes of youth doth lie,” he proclaims in lines 9 and 10, clearly alluding to the extinguishing of passion (the fire). Shakespeare employs his form of the sonnet for the piece and this clearly adds to the meaning. The first two quatrains work to establish some sense of nearing the end, while the third begins to describe the end itself. The final powerful couplet delivers his final message that love should be held dear, for it shall not be there forever.
Compared to “That time of year thou may’st behold,” “how do I love thee?” is almost a flashback to the beginning of the former speaker’s life. Browning’s Petrarchan sonnet features a young speaker, brimming with passion and devotion. She loves this man with her entirety and feels as though this feeling shall last forever. “I love thee with the breath/ Smiles, tears, of all my life/ and if God shall choose, I shall love thee better after death” she exclaims in lines 12-14. In direct opposition to Shakespeare’s speaker’spoint of view, this speaker believes you can love someone with your entirety and forever. Browning utilizes the Petrarchan sonnet for her poem. Her opening octave gracefully builds from a small love letter focused on the physical things, “depth and breadth and height” (line 2), to a letter of everlasting devotion, “I love thee purely, as they turn from praise” (line 8). This crescendo climaxes at the volta, where the speaker states that “[she] loves [him] with the passion put to use/ in my old griefs and with my childhood’s faith” (lines 10-11). The sestet continues to build upon this, making claims of complete and eternal love. The speaker is fully immersed in her infatuation and this poem clearly shows it.
While these two poets employ the sonnet to discuss love, they have greatly different understandings of the concept. Browning’s speaker is young and naive, brimming with a seemingly unquenchable passion that is currently being burnt out in Shakespeare’s speaker. This causes the reader to wonder how two authors could draw such dissimilar conclusions. Age is clearly a factor. The young are idealistic and the old are cynical. Somewhere in life our beliefs change. Thus, the reader is compelled to wonder; does the world corrupt our pure emotions or teach our naïve feelings?
Sample 2
Villanelles are highly structured poems whose disciplined structure is used to enhance the meaning of the poem. “One Art” by Elizabeth Bishop and “Do not go gentle into that good night” by Dylan Thomas are both villanelles which deal with loss, yet treat the subject in opposite ways. In both works, the poets’ choice of villanelle and the inherent strength of its form strengthen their emotional impacts.
In both works, the speaker states generally before making personal connections to themselves. The abstract beginnings of the poem gathers the reader’s interest and then the concrete, personal connection towards the end helps the reader in turn make a personal connection with the poem, thus emotionally investing themselves and becoming more open to the poem’s themes. Just like the speaker in Thomas’ work talks generally citing “wise men,” “good men,” “wild men,” and “grave men,” before pleading to his father, Bishop’s speaker tarts with lost keys and forgotten names before moving to homes left behind and people who are moving on without her. The vulnerability the speakers show in both poems also contributes towards the reader’s sympathy and emotional attachment, touching our sense of pathos and heightening the feeling of loss which the speakers are conveying.
Yet both poems treat the subject of loss very differently. In “one art” the speaker has realized that loss is inevitable and is now struggling to accept the loss of an extremely important person in her life; the poem is an attempt to console herself and to keep from collapsing. In “Don’t go gentle into that good night” the speaker is frustrated at the sight of his father slowly giving up on life, and is full of angry passion’ the poem is written to encourage his father to keep fighting for his life because passion is what the man needs to really live. On closer examination, one would also agree that Thomas’ poem is also written to console the speaker himself. In the face of the imminent and assumed death of his father, the speaker encourages himself to stay strong and to keep fighting, to “rage against the dying of the light.”
Both these contrasting approaches on the same subject are enhanced by the villanelle’s structure. In “Do not go gentle into that good night” the form of the villanelle acts as a loudspeaker, amplifying the forceful message to persist in life. The repeated lines “Do not go gentle into that good night” and “rage, rage against the dying of the light” grow stronger every time they are repeated. They gain momentum and are delivered in the end like a fighter’s last stand who has given everything he has and is standing gasping in his place, but is going to resume the fight any second now Thomas’ forceful adherence to the ABAB rhyme scheme and strict iambic pentameter belie the speaker’s conviction in his cause.
Contrastingly the speaker in “One art” clings to the villanelle’s structure as a source of strength like a person might wrap themselves around a pole during a windstorm. Yet, her grief shows through; the structure cannot prevent her from cracking as she wishes it would. She has difficulty complying with the rhyme scheme resorting to slant rhyme when she is unable to find a word that would really fit. In the beginning, when talking about the general, harmless losses, the structure supports her okay, but can no longer hold her together at the end. Commands from the speaker to the audience like “Look!” and “practice losing everyday” change to orders for herself; “write it’ she says. Furthermore, the speaker is even having trouble keeping up with the meter by the end of the poem, needing to add a dash at the beginning of the quatrain so as not to fall out of the rhythm. And unlike Thomas’ clear repetitions of his refrain the repeated line about disaster is altered each time, displaying the poet’s lack of ability to concentrate on her poem at hand – her grief is too distracting.