Pub 5

Poetry is a creative outlet that evokes a plethora of human emotions. One of the strongest emotions an individual can feel is love and once a person experiences true unconditional love he or she will be able to experience poetry in a whole new light. What is the point of reading poetry if you cannot relate to the poet’s sensations and passions? Poetry written about love is so evocative of human emotion because love comes in infinite forms. The way you love your mother is not the same way as you love your spouse or your sibling; that is what makes love so complex. One of the most painful experiences one goes through in life is the loss of a loved one. Depending on the depth of the love, someone’s entire purpose to live could cease. This is where the outlet of poetry becomes so important. Famous poets, like Ezra Pound and W.H Auden, expressed the theme related to the loss of a loved one using the tone of hopelessness and melancholy in their poems. The same theme and the same tones are also conveyed in Sinéad O'Connor’s song, Nothing Compares 2 U.

In Ezra Pound’s poignant poem, The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter, the theme of losing a loved one is prevalent throughout the piece. With the use of a gloomy tone, Pound is able to express how strongly the emotion of love is. “The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind. The paired butterflies are already yellow with August. Over the grass in the West garden; They hurt me. I grow older” (Pound 22-25). In these lines, Pound illustrates how passing through life without a soulmate is too painful to endure. Without your significant other, life is useless.

W.H. Auden dramatically illustrates the same theme of losing a loved one in her poem, Stop All the Clocks, Cut Off the Telephone. Auden states, “He was my North, my South, my East, and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong” (Auden 9-12). Using such strong language and emotion, the reader is able to feel how deep and important his love was for his significant other. By describing the theme of loss of a loved one in such detail, the feelings of hopelessness, sadness, and depression are conveyed.

Sinéad O'Connor’s song, Nothing Compares 2 U, is a heart wrenching portrayal of losing the person you thought was your soul mate. O’Connor’s song contains melancholy lyrics like, “It's been so lonely without you here. Like a bird without a song” and “It's been seven hours and fifteen days Since you took your love away I go out every night and sleep all day Since you took your love away Since you been gone I can do whatever I want I can see whomever I choose…But nothing I said nothing can take away these blues 'Cause nothing compares Nothing compares to you” (O’Connor 1990). O’Connor is stating that there is no one else on this earth that she could love. Even though she is single now, she is still plagued with the pain from her broken heart.

The similarities of each piece are clearly illustrated in the way these writers portray their shared experiences. Each artist uses dramatic language in their poem to express the depth of their deep pain. In Sinéad O'Connor’s song, she states that it had been 7 hours and fifteen days since her boyfriend had broken up with her. Knowing the exact amount of time, illustrates how traumatic this loss was for her. In Ezra Pound’s poem, he depicts a woman longing for her husband. This longing is illustrated in the that when he returns she will meet him out at sea. “Please let me know beforehand, and I will come out to meet as far as Cho-fu-Sa” (Pound 28-30). W.H. Auden dramatically states, “The stars are not wanted now: put out every one; Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun” (Auden 13-14). In these lines, Auden suggests that there is no beauty in the world if there is no love. Using a dramatically depressing tone, these artists were able to express their emotion without blatantly stating that they are feeling miserable.

Anyone who has lost someone they loved would be able to relate to all three off these pieces. The most important aspect of reading poetry is that it allows us to feel a connection to the poet. All three of these artists were able to express that losing a loved one is traumatic and scary. Through their poetry, they allowed the reader to share this experience with them. When analyzing each piece, one can see that the purpose each work was to define how losing a person changes one’s life for the worse. Someone that is going through a parallel experience, can read these two poems, and listen to Sinead O’Connor’s song and have their feelings justified.