The three poems I am going to write about are ‘I wanna be yours’, ‘To His Coy Mistress’ and ‘Our Love Now’. In my essay, I am going to relate to way in which the poems I have chosen show there attitudes towards love and lovers. I am going to study the way in which the poets use language to create the attitudes towards love and I am going to study the ways in which the poems create the whole idea of love and what its purpose in life is.
The layout of ‘Our Love Now’ is set out as if it was an argument, but when you look at the line numbers it is not an argument because the man says it all first and then the women says it all.
The woman in ‘Our Love Now’ portrays their love as dead, while the man portrays their love as getting stronger:
‘The tree is forever dead
Such is our love’
That is what the woman says about their relationship after they had an argument or something. The man says:
‘The breach in us can be mended’
This shows us that the mans attitude towards love is very different to woman’s attitude towards love. The man thinks that whatever has happened between them has just made their love stronger but the woman believes very different to what he thinks. The man sees the relationship as mending the past but the woman sees their relationship as dead as a tree, this shows us that the poet thinks that men have different views on love and relationships than a woman would have.
The poem shows what men think about relationships and love in the general. It also shows the woman’s thoughts about relationships and love. The poem shows a typical mans views on line five and six:
‘The cut will mend, and such
is our relationship’
While the woman’s views about the same thing is:
‘There is always a scar
a permanent reminder’
The woman’s views are that once there was a boundary between her and her boyfriend that is overcome, there will always be a painful reminder of that with a scar. This again shows that men have a different outlook on relationships compared to women.
The second poem I have chosen is ‘I wanna be yours’. This poem makes love sound unique and something very special that only happens once in your life. This is shown in the language that the author has used. The author uses repetition throughout the poem. He repeats:
‘I wanna be yours’ And ‘Let me be’
This shows the other side of a mans views on love when compared to the man in ‘Our Love Now’. This poem shows the attitude towards love women actually want when the man in ‘Our Love Now’ is showing the other side, the one women do not want.
The poet uses repetition and by making visual images through the way in which he writes the poem. He does this to show that the man and woman is a perfect match:
‘Let me be your dreamboat
when you wanna sail away’
This shows that the characters in the poems attitudes to love are warm and open minded about the whole thing.
The third poem I have chosen is ‘To His Coy Mistress’. This is a pre- twentieth century poem. This poem has the same outline as ‘I wanna be yours’ by showing that the man is in love with a women and he is trying to persuade her to be his lover.
This poem is very romantic towards the woman that the man in the poem is after because every woman who reads the poem secretly wishes that they could be treated in the way that the man is treating the woman.
This poem has little hidden messages towards the reader and the woman, in the poem it says:
‘The grave’s a fine and private place.
But none, I think do there embrace
Now, therefore, while the youthful hue.’
This is telling us that the man is saying we are going to die anyway, so life your life while you can and give me a chance. This shows that the man is after the woman for love but the woman is thinking about his offer.
‘To His Coy Mistress’ and ‘I wanna be yours’ have the same outline of the poems. This is shown by both texts having a man in love with a woman. The men are trying everything to persuade the women in the poems to give them a chance. The men in these poems have totally different attitudes to love. ‘I wanna be yours’ shows the other side of a mans views on love when compared to the man in ‘Our Love Now’. The man in ‘Our Love Now’ is only thinking about himself in the relationship and not the woman while the man in ‘I wanna be yours’ thinks about both himself and the woman.
‘I wanna be yours’ and ‘To His Coy Mistress’ portray love as something special and everlasting while ‘Our Love Now’ portrays love as a part time thing. However, it concentrates more of the bad side of love rather than the good side of love and this is shown in the layout of the poem, it is layed out as if it was an argument.
