05-24-2014, 01:44 PM
Hey - nice to meet another person new on the forum.
I have a harder and hard time wrapping my head around the poem as it goes on. I feel like I have a good idea of what's being described at the beginning, because the poem is fairly concrete in the first couplet (which seems to be all about a woman's desire), a little more general in the second couplet though still interpretable, and a lot more abstract and open in the final couplet.
I end up having a few questions about the poem. I'm interpreting "the want" in the second couplet as the want of the other person in the poem, not the speaker; the woman wants something beyond "mere wife", but the speaker doesn't want to give it to her - whatever that is - and that makes him uncomfortable. I'm with you so far if that's what was intended by this word choice, by framing "the want" as something disconnected from the people in the poem. But then, because it's disconnected, I wonder if "the want" is meant to refer to both parties.
Most of my questions are about the last couplet though: what is "the shallow within ourselves"? And why should we get invested in the relationship described in the poem, care that it ends in empathy rather than apathy? Does anything change in the heart of the speaker?
I think the sound in this poem works best when it's half/slant rhyme, or when it's alliteration. The "true" rhymes in the poem feel very stressed to me, and I think that in a few places it feels like there might be better word choices. I love the resonance in "burns and begs", but I find the devour/power, wife/strife, pain/strain rhymes a little simple - especially in a poem this condensed, where sound and construction are both important.
I have a harder and hard time wrapping my head around the poem as it goes on. I feel like I have a good idea of what's being described at the beginning, because the poem is fairly concrete in the first couplet (which seems to be all about a woman's desire), a little more general in the second couplet though still interpretable, and a lot more abstract and open in the final couplet.
I end up having a few questions about the poem. I'm interpreting "the want" in the second couplet as the want of the other person in the poem, not the speaker; the woman wants something beyond "mere wife", but the speaker doesn't want to give it to her - whatever that is - and that makes him uncomfortable. I'm with you so far if that's what was intended by this word choice, by framing "the want" as something disconnected from the people in the poem. But then, because it's disconnected, I wonder if "the want" is meant to refer to both parties.
Most of my questions are about the last couplet though: what is "the shallow within ourselves"? And why should we get invested in the relationship described in the poem, care that it ends in empathy rather than apathy? Does anything change in the heart of the speaker?
I think the sound in this poem works best when it's half/slant rhyme, or when it's alliteration. The "true" rhymes in the poem feel very stressed to me, and I think that in a few places it feels like there might be better word choices. I love the resonance in "burns and begs", but I find the devour/power, wife/strife, pain/strain rhymes a little simple - especially in a poem this condensed, where sound and construction are both important.