The first poem I will be analysing is Love Is… by Adrian Henri. The poem has an AAA,BBB,CCC,DDD,EEE rhyme scheme and the structure is three lines then a fourth which are the words ‘love is’ which could mean that Adrian Henri is trying to say that love is just love or that love is just always there in any shape or form. The first line says ‘love is feeling cold in the back of vans’ and the third line says ‘love is walking holding paintstained hands’.
Here he is trying to get across that love is not just what you feel for one another but doing things together and helping each other through the thick and thin of it, or he might be trying to say that love is once again everywhere including where you work whether you a builder or a solicitor you can still find love in the work place, or maybe even both of the suggestions and that what he writes has a double meaning.
In the second stanza the first line is ‘love is fish and chips on winter nights’ I think that this is referring to a couple because these are two items commonly associated with each other like a couple is, also it could mean that love is eating with the ones you love and tying to keep warm together when cold. I also think this is referring to the fact the feeling of love can be associated with a warm feeling.
In the third stanza the first line is ‘love is the presents in Christmas shops’ I think this means when you either buy gifts for a loved one you have to work hard to get money for a gift just like you have to work hard to keep a relationship going or that love is treating the person you love to a gift to show your affection for them and how much you care for them. The second and third lines are associated with each other and I think the poet is trying to say that music is one of the things that everyone has in common with because everyone likes music no matter what type it is.
The second line could be referring to when you are so full of love that you feel great about yourself and on top of the world and the third line could be the author describing a classic romance film scene when two lover’s eyes meet from across the dance floor and the music stops. This is because the lines are ‘love Is when you’re feeling top of the pops. Love is what happens when the music stops’. Adrian Henri in the fourth stanza I think is referring to a one night stand and how love can lead to a spur of the moment which you may or may not later regret and even if you do regret it, it was still love that made you do it.
What makes me think this is because the fourth stanza says ‘love is white panties lying all forlorn, Love is pink nightdresses still slightly warm, Love is when you have to leave at dawn’. From this you get the impression that it is a one night stand or that it is about a couple who one of them has to leave early in the morning for work. Finally the fifth stanza is about what love feels like and how it is always there keeping a couple together and how that you always feel love for someone even though that they may not be there.
Love is you and love is me, Love is prison and love is free, Love’s what’s there when you are away from me’ these are the line from the poem and you can see that Adrian Henri wants to get the point across that love is there no matter what. On the second line of the poem when it refers to loves is a prison I think that he is suggesting that love keeps you and the person you love ‘locked together’ and that the love one another feels for each other will not escape.
When he refers to love is free I think that he means that after something bad has happened to you love can be the thing that can help you move on. What I mean by this that if you lost someone you love in an accident the love from fellow family members can help you move on. Overall this poem is referring to how love feels and what it looks like when you look at someone rather than focusing on an object e. g. the love of a person. He expresses how he thinks love feels through day to day experiences that can happen to anyone.
The second poem I will be analysing is Sonnet 130 by William Shakespeare. The poem has a rhyme scheme of ABAB,CDCD,EFEF,GG this is a typical rhyme scheme for shakespearn sonnets but it is rather a peculiar because in this particular sonnet he does not describe his mistress as a an item of tremendous beauty but describes her as not being as good as something else The first line says ‘my mistress eyes are nothing like the sun’; here Shakespeare is not complimenting the person but sating the truth, this because nobody’s eyes are like the sun.
In the fourth Shakespeare once again describes his mistress for what she is just like he does through out the entire poem. ‘If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head’ here he is saying that no one is perfect and that everyone has imperfections whether it is bad hair or a poor voice. This sort of language and description of his mistress not being as good as something else continues though out the sonnet but on line nine this all changes because he starts saying that he loves her anyway e. g. I love to hear my mistress speak, yet I know that music hath a far more pleasing sound’ The last four lines say although his mistress is not perfect and goddess like he loves her for what she is and there is nothing about her that is false. The last four lines are: ‘I grant I never saw a goddess go- my mistress when she walks treads on ground. And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied by false compare. ‘ You can tell that this poem has come from Shakespeare’s heart and is written as if he was speaking to someone about his mistress.
What suggests this is that he says my mistress’s and then follows on which if he was speaking to her he would you said you instead. You can also tell that this has come from Shakespeare’s heart because in the last four lines he writes how much he loves her for all the things she is including things that others might see as imperfections. On first impressions of this poem the sonnet seemed to flow when reading it, despite in some cases four lines making up one sentence although, the included punctuation appears to hide this.
Overall Shakespeare focuses on a love of an object in this case a person rather than the way that love feels and that he loves a real women with a true image shown not a fake women with all imperfection hidden. So to conclude overall the way the two poets Adrian Henri and William Shakespeare differ in the way they explore love is that Adrian Henri focuses on how love feels and William Shakespeare focussing on the love a person in this case the love of his mistress.
