This week I felt I should cover a topic which affects so many people these days in so many ways. It's not a nice one in any way but people do produce some very touching work around it and so I felt I should share some of it and my thoughts as well.
No one needs to hear any of the disheartening figures about divorce, affairs, walk-outs, and everyone who is lucky enough to have two parents I am sure has experienced that awful feeling when they are shouting at one another and there is nothing you can do and you ask yourself if this is it. The end. Sure, things go back to normal for most people but not everyone is so lucky.
So here I will post two poems, one from the point of view of the two spouses, one from the child, because both perspectives are important and both poems are touching.
Modern Love: I
by George Meredith
By this he knew she wept with waking eyes:
That, at his hand's light quiver by her head,
The strange low sobs that shook their common bed
Were called into her with a sharp surprise,
And strangled mute, like little gaping snakes,
Dreadfully venomous to him. She lay
Stone-still, and the long darkness flowed away
With muffled pulses. Then, as midnight makes
Her giant heart of Memory and Tears
Drink the pale drug of silence, and so beat
Sleep's heavy measure, they from head to feet
Were moveless, looking through their dead black years,
By vain regret scrawled over the blank wall.
Like sculptured effigies they might be seen
Upon their marriage-tomb, the sword between;
Each wishing for the sword that severs all.
Strangely, this poem is not as 'modern' as I had first thought by the title. It was written during the Victorian period but I'm sure you will agree it is still relevant today. I am assuming that the reason for the 'I' in the title is to imply that 'modern love' is about the self, or at least it is after love has left a marriage. Its isolation in the title reinforces this all the more.
The poem starts with an exophoric reference, 'this'. Thus the reader is placed 'in medias res', and 'this' could mean any little crack in a marriage that has slowly been chipped into a hole. The tragedy of this poem is the reminder of how a marriage should be shared, with words like 'common' and the singular 'head', as if they are one body. This is broken by the end of the poem, when they both wish for severance, a violent image which implies death would be better than their current situation, or, more worryingly, that each wishes to be rid of the other. 'Til death do us part' and all.
But this latter interpretation has not much proof, mainly because the 'he' in the poem does not seem to hate or even dislike his wife. He relates her weeping as 'venomous' but I read that more as a disappointment and regret in hisself that he could not keep her happy. The marriage is a part of him and it is dying and so he feel injured. He is also trying to be tender, with his hand quivering 'by her head', but this only emphasises the distance they feel between one another. And they both seem to be doing the same thing by being 'moveless', still ironically in sync even when their marriage is falling apart.
Now for my second choice: Divorce by Jackie kay
I did not promise
to stay with you till death do us part, or
anything like that,
so part I must, and quickly. There are things
I cannot suffer
any longer: Mother, you never, ever said
a kind word
or a thank-you for all the tedious chores I have done;
Father, your breath
smells like a camel’s and gives me the hump;
all you ever say is:
‘Are you off in the cream puff, Lady Muck?’
In this day and age?
I would be better off in an orphanage.
I want a divorce.
There are parents in the world whose faces turn
up to the light
who speak in the soft murmur of rivers
and never shout.
There are parents who stroke their children’s cheeks
in the dead of night
and sing in the colourful voices of rainbows,
red to blue.
These parents are not you. I never chose you.
You are rough and wild,
I don’t want to be your child. All you do is shout
and that’s not right.
I will file for divorce in the morning at first light.
I love how this poem begins and ends as if the narrator were a spouse. it highlights how there are more than two members of a marriage once children have been born. it also makes the younger person the one with the most sense as they can see that the relationships in the house are unhealthy and destructive. Not only are the parents here arguing with each other but they are neglecting their child because if they cannot love one another they cannot love what they produced together.
Yes, some of the lines come as shocking, like being 'better off in an orphanage' but they mimic the types of statements that are said in the heat of the moment and cause so much harm, even if unintentionally. We wish we could take them back but we cannot. That is why the line causes the end of the stanza, I think; a new start to the argument is needed. And that start is a straight forward sentence, showing that calm has returned to the voice of the narrator.
The fact that it is addressed throughout to the parents with the pronoun 'you' creates this feeling of argument and justice once it ahs been said. Thus, by the end of the poem, the narrator is ready to move on after having bottled up so many emotions and suddenly let them out. And like the first poem I looked at, 'I' is placed as most important from the outset as it is the pronoun which begins the poem, and can even have stress when spoken because it would highlight that she is a part of the marriage but did not ask to be a part of it.
...
For anyone who'd like to look at a poem with the same theme but with a less serious tone, 'How much do I love thee' is an affective piece, based on my favourite love poem, 'How do I love thee' by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Whatever helps you cope.
No one needs to hear any of the disheartening figures about divorce, affairs, walk-outs, and everyone who is lucky enough to have two parents I am sure has experienced that awful feeling when they are shouting at one another and there is nothing you can do and you ask yourself if this is it. The end. Sure, things go back to normal for most people but not everyone is so lucky.
So here I will post two poems, one from the point of view of the two spouses, one from the child, because both perspectives are important and both poems are touching.
Modern Love: I
by George Meredith
By this he knew she wept with waking eyes:
That, at his hand's light quiver by her head,
The strange low sobs that shook their common bed
Were called into her with a sharp surprise,
And strangled mute, like little gaping snakes,
Dreadfully venomous to him. She lay
Stone-still, and the long darkness flowed away
With muffled pulses. Then, as midnight makes
Her giant heart of Memory and Tears
Drink the pale drug of silence, and so beat
Sleep's heavy measure, they from head to feet
Were moveless, looking through their dead black years,
By vain regret scrawled over the blank wall.
Like sculptured effigies they might be seen
Upon their marriage-tomb, the sword between;
Each wishing for the sword that severs all.
Strangely, this poem is not as 'modern' as I had first thought by the title. It was written during the Victorian period but I'm sure you will agree it is still relevant today. I am assuming that the reason for the 'I' in the title is to imply that 'modern love' is about the self, or at least it is after love has left a marriage. Its isolation in the title reinforces this all the more.
The poem starts with an exophoric reference, 'this'. Thus the reader is placed 'in medias res', and 'this' could mean any little crack in a marriage that has slowly been chipped into a hole. The tragedy of this poem is the reminder of how a marriage should be shared, with words like 'common' and the singular 'head', as if they are one body. This is broken by the end of the poem, when they both wish for severance, a violent image which implies death would be better than their current situation, or, more worryingly, that each wishes to be rid of the other. 'Til death do us part' and all.
But this latter interpretation has not much proof, mainly because the 'he' in the poem does not seem to hate or even dislike his wife. He relates her weeping as 'venomous' but I read that more as a disappointment and regret in hisself that he could not keep her happy. The marriage is a part of him and it is dying and so he feel injured. He is also trying to be tender, with his hand quivering 'by her head', but this only emphasises the distance they feel between one another. And they both seem to be doing the same thing by being 'moveless', still ironically in sync even when their marriage is falling apart.
Now for my second choice: Divorce by Jackie kay
I did not promise
to stay with you till death do us part, or
anything like that,
so part I must, and quickly. There are things
I cannot suffer
any longer: Mother, you never, ever said
a kind word
or a thank-you for all the tedious chores I have done;
Father, your breath
smells like a camel’s and gives me the hump;
all you ever say is:
‘Are you off in the cream puff, Lady Muck?’
In this day and age?
I would be better off in an orphanage.
I want a divorce.
There are parents in the world whose faces turn
up to the light
who speak in the soft murmur of rivers
and never shout.
There are parents who stroke their children’s cheeks
in the dead of night
and sing in the colourful voices of rainbows,
red to blue.
These parents are not you. I never chose you.
You are rough and wild,
I don’t want to be your child. All you do is shout
and that’s not right.
I will file for divorce in the morning at first light.
I love how this poem begins and ends as if the narrator were a spouse. it highlights how there are more than two members of a marriage once children have been born. it also makes the younger person the one with the most sense as they can see that the relationships in the house are unhealthy and destructive. Not only are the parents here arguing with each other but they are neglecting their child because if they cannot love one another they cannot love what they produced together.
Yes, some of the lines come as shocking, like being 'better off in an orphanage' but they mimic the types of statements that are said in the heat of the moment and cause so much harm, even if unintentionally. We wish we could take them back but we cannot. That is why the line causes the end of the stanza, I think; a new start to the argument is needed. And that start is a straight forward sentence, showing that calm has returned to the voice of the narrator.
The fact that it is addressed throughout to the parents with the pronoun 'you' creates this feeling of argument and justice once it ahs been said. Thus, by the end of the poem, the narrator is ready to move on after having bottled up so many emotions and suddenly let them out. And like the first poem I looked at, 'I' is placed as most important from the outset as it is the pronoun which begins the poem, and can even have stress when spoken because it would highlight that she is a part of the marriage but did not ask to be a part of it.
...
For anyone who'd like to look at a poem with the same theme but with a less serious tone, 'How much do I love thee' is an affective piece, based on my favourite love poem, 'How do I love thee' by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Whatever helps you cope.
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