Poetry Analysis of Adrienne Rich's Twenty One Love Poems
Poetry Analysis of Adrienne Rich's Twenty One Love Poems
Lit. of Love
April 26, 2002
Response Paper #4
XIX
Can it be growing colder when I begin
to touch myself again, adhesions pull away?
When slowly the naked face turns from staring backward
and looks into the present,
the eye of winter, city, anger, poverty, and death
and the lips part and say, I mean to go on living?
Am I speaking coldly when I tell you in a dream
or in this poem, There are no miracles?
(I told you from the first I wanted daily life,
this island of Manhatten was island enough for me.)
If I could let you know—
two women together is work
nothing in civilization has made simple,
two people together is a work
heroic in its ordinariness,
the slow-picked, halting traverse of a pitch
where the fiercest attention becomes routine
--look at the faces of those who have chosen it.
-By Adrienne Rich
In Adrienne Rich’s Twenty-One Love Poems, each poem gives insight into the life she has chosen for herself. These poems deal with her struggle to rise out of the drudge of city life and rise up to the beauty of love. The setting of these poems is on the island of Manhattan, and the reader is taken on the ups and downs of her life. These poems also tell of the beauty and passion between her and her lover. In poem XIX, the reader is introduced to the hardships of love that the speaker deals with. Throughout this poem the speaker asks herself questions, but also directs them to her lover.
In poem XIX one sees the darker side of her life in this City. In the first two lines of this poem the reader is confronted with this darker side. The speaker begins by asking, “Can it be growing colder when I begin to touch myself again, adhesions pull away?” This gives the poem a tone of pain and sadness. One would not ordinarily associate touching oneself (sexual pleasure) with a feeling of coldness, but this image gives the impression that this action has brought up a painful memory or an unhappy feeling.
The next line follows with: “When slowly the naked face turns from staring backward and looks into the present.” I believe this line expresses a shift of focus in her life: from the past to the present. The next line goes on to define what she sees when...