The woman then tries to kill the flea, but she is stopped before she has done it, he argues that by killing the flea she is spilling his blood and hers, so she is practically committing murder.
The flea is eventually killed, and the man is forced to change his argument. He now argues that killing the flea was so easy and it hasn’t harmed us, and that giving her virginity to him will just be as easy and painless.
The flea in this poem is used as a metaphor to describe the act of sexual intercourse. I don’t think this poem is a very successful poem, because this man is trying to force his lover into having sex with him when she doesn’t want to, even though his arguments don’t work anyway.
The second poem I’m going to consider is ‘Valentine’, by Carol Ann Duffy. ‘Valentine’ is about someone who gives their lover an onion as a Valentines Day present, and the explanation of the significance of the onion. Carol Ann Duffy starts by saying that it’s ‘Not a red rose or a satin heart.’ And that it is in fact an onion.
In the first verse of the poem she tells us that the onion is a moon wrapped in brown paper and that it promises light ‘like the careful undressing of love’. It is described as a moon wrapped in brown paper because an onion is wrapped in many brown layers of skin, that you ‘undress’.
The second verse of this poem says that the onion will blind you with tears ‘like a lover’. This means that as you cut up an onion it makes you cry, because, at times, love can be painful and bring tears. It also says that ‘It will make your reflection a wobbling photo of grief.’ Because as your eyes fill up with tears, your vision goes ‘wobbly’.
The next verse is just a line long, which simply says ‘I am trying to be truthful.’ The next verse is just as short, but this verse says ‘not a cute card or a kissogram’.
The fifth verse says that the onions ‘fierce kiss will stay on your lips, possessive and faithful as we are’. This is said because, when you eat an onion/onions its taste stays in your mouth for a long time, and is ‘possessive’ because there isn’t much that will take away the smell/taste of onions from your mouth, so this is described as its ‘fierce kiss’.
The last verse says that ‘Its platinum loops shrink to a wedding-ring if you like’. This means that as you keep taking layer after layer off an onion the rings will eventually be small enough to fit your finger, like a wedding-ring does. “its scent will cling to your fingers’ means that the ring will stay on your finger – stay married.
I think this is an effective and well written poem even thought it does not have any rhyming pattern or rhythm, and there is no pattern to the verses. When you first read it you think ‘why would somebody buy an onion for valentines day?’, but when you read more in depth into the poem, you start to realize the significance of the onion.
The third poem I’m going to consider is “O my luve’s like a red, red rose”, by Robert Burns. “O my luve’s like a red, red rose” is about a man declaring his love for his girlfriend. He starts by saying how his love is like a “red, red rose, that’s newly sprung in June”, because a red rose sprung in June is very pretty, and he is telling his girl that she is beautiful.
The next verse he tells her that “I will luve thee still, my dear, till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear, and the rocks melt wi’ the sun”, by this he means that he will love her forever, because those two things he described will never happen. “I will luve thee still, my dear, While the sands o’ life shall run”, he is saying that as long as he is alive he will always love her.
I think this poem is successful because it gets its points across very well, in the other two poems the symbols used to represent love are very unusual, but the things he says in this poem are very easy to understand why he is saying them.
The last poem I will consider is ‘Sonnet 116’, by William Shakespeare. ‘Sonnet 116’ is all about how love lasts forever, and is always strong. It starts by saying ‘Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediment’. This means basically ‘Don’t let me allow any obstacles in our marriage’.
The next line says ‘Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds’, this means if your feelings for somebody change when something else changes (eg. Appearance, habits, etc.) then it is not true love, because ‘o, no, it is an ever-fixed mark’ – If you are in love then It will last forever.
A few lines later, Shakespeare says that ‘Love’s not times fool’ which also means that love lasts forever and doesn’t falter. ‘Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, but bears it out even to the edge of doom’, this means that whatever happens to each of the two people their love for each other will always be strong no matter what.
The last two lines say this ‘If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved.’ This is Shakespeare speaking for himself and he is saying that, if he is proved wrong about anything in this poem, then no man has ever truly loved another human.
I think this is the most successful and effective poems out of the three I’ve considered and of the six I’ve studied, mainly because I think all of the things Shakespeare says in this poem are true, I think that’s what makes it so successful.
After looking at these poems, I don’t think the symbols and sentiments expressed have changed. If you look at ‘The Flea’, written four hundred years ago, and ‘Valentine’, written in the twentieth century. Then you see that an onion and a flea are very unusual things to use to represent love. I just think that it isn’t the thing that you are describing that has to be associated with love in any way, it’s the way you describe it which makes it a ‘love poem’.
