Pee Relationships

|Summary/Themes |Born Yesterday and Nettles |
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|Born Yesterday and Nettles are both written about adults’ thoughts regarding children and how they will survive in the world. |
|Born Yesterday explores the poet’s feelings about the birth of his friend’s daughter and rejects traditional, fairytale |
|visions of happiness for practical, realistic advice about life skills, whereas Nettles depicts a father’s realisation that he|
|cannot protect his young son from all the everyday dangers in the world and his son will inevitably experience pain as he |
|grows up. |

|Summary/Themes |Sonnet 116 and Manhunt |
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|Sonnet 116 and The Manhunt are both about the power of romantic love in committed relationships. Sonnet 116 is a declaration |
|of love that describes true romantic love as a constant force of nature that does not change as people go through life |
|changes, a passion that “looks upon tempests and is never shaken.” Similarly, in The Manhunt the narrator is fully aware of |
|the damage done to her lover by warfare, and the changes it has caused in his emotions and appearance, but she is unwavering |
|in her love and determined to find again the man she loves, to “feel the hurt of his grazed heart” but still “widening the |
|search” for the man inside. |

|Form |Brothers and Sister Maude |
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|Brothers is written in the second person and free verse, almost like a story in an autobiography, as the poet addresses his |
|younger brother with regret for his past actions, as if he is trying to apologise for the “distance” he has caused between |
|them. Sister Maude, on the other hand, is also written in the second person as the narrator addresses her sister in a dramatic|
|monologue in the form of a ballad, but she uses the poem as a bitter accusation and the end-stopped lines emphasise her anger |

|Form |Sonnet 43 and Sonnet 116 |
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|Sonnet 43 and Sonnet 116 are both romantic poems that use the traditional sonnet form to express ideas about the nature of |
|love. The declaration of love that will survive the grave in Sonnet 43 is written in the second person as a direct address to |
|answer the rhetorical question “How do I love thee?” and uses iambic pentameter and the sonnet form to express love as a |
|religious experience. While Sonnet 116 does use iambic pentameter and the sonnet form of three quatrains and a rhyming |
|couplet, it is written in the first person as the poet discusses the nature of true love, rather than addressing his lover |
|directly, more of a declaration of what true love should be. |

|Structure |Ghazal and Quickdraw |
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|Ghazal and Quickdraw are both about romantic relationships between men and women, but the structure of Ghazal reflects the |
|playful, intense nature of the beginning of a relationship, whereas the structure of Quickdraw reflects the painful, |
|progressive breakdown of an existing relationship. The narrator in Ghazal attempts to woo her love by asking him to pursue |
|her, using metaphors to compare their love to unrelated ideas from nature, hinting at the exciting adventure to come, whereas |
|the structure of Quickdraw is more chronological and describes an escalating argument as the narrator receives an increasing |
|number of angry, hurtful calls and texts that result in the end of her relationship and, as if she has actually been shot |
|dead. |

|Structure |Brothers and Sister Maude |
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|Although Brothers and Sister Maude are both about narrators looking back on family relationships that have turned bad because |
|of a past betrayal, the structure of Brothers slowly reveals the narrator’s regret for his actions and taking responsibility |
|for the consequences for misleading his young brother in a moment of childhood irresponsibility, describing the folly of his |
|younger self and then acknowledging how this has caused estrangement in adulthood. The key incident in Sister Maude, and its |
|consequences are revealed slowly, with an ambiguous opening stanza and reference to a death that requires the reader to infer |
|what has occurred as a result of Sister Maude’s betrayal. The final stanza shows no sense of understanding or moral |
|responsibility and the poem ends with the narrator condemning her sister to purgatory and sin. |

|Language |In Paris With You and Sonnet 116 |
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|Both In Paris With You and Sonnet 116 use language that captures the different emotions of each poem. The narrator of In Paris|
|With You has a very cynical, jaded view of love and mocks the traditional romantic view of Paris by refusing to leave the |
|“sleazy old hotel room” and mocks Paris landmarks with “sod off to sodding Notre Dame,” using unexpected crudity and the |
|sibilance of the “s” sounds to express contempt for the city’s sights. This is in marked opposition to the romantic images of |
|the power of love found in Sonnet 116, where the power of love is personified as a force of nature that “alters not with his |
|brief hours and weeks,” as if love is a commitment that lasts for a lifetime and is not as changeable or selfish as the |
|emotions expressed by the narrator of In Paris With You. |

|Language |Harmonium and Praise Song For My Mother |
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|Each poet uses the personification of objects in the poems to act as metaphors for their respective parents. In Harmonium, the|
|poet expresses concern about his father’s mortality with colloquial language, discussing the instrument’s neglect and |
|deterioration, with the “yellowed fingernails” of the keys used to echo his father’s tobacco stained fingers and the exit from|
|the church “laid on its back” to foreshadow the funeral service awaiting his father in the near future. In contrast with this |
|comparison, the poet in Praise Song celebrates the life of her dead mother with positive sense memories of the “fish, crab” |
|and “plantain” of her Caribbean childhood, as if her mother has fed and nourished her beliefs and dreams that have allowed the|
|poet to go to her “wide future.” |
|Poet’s Message/Conclusion |Hour and The Farmer’s Bride |
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|The poems Hour and The Farmer’s Bride allow the poets to explore very different ideas about romantic love, though both serve |
|as a warning in a way. The crucial message in Hour could be seen as the more positive of the two, with the poet using the |
|personification of time as love’s enemy and reminding the reader that time is precious and we should enjoy every moment |
|together, whereas The Farmer’s Bride warns that there can be no happy ending for a badly chosen marriage made for the wrong |
|reasons, where unrequited love brings misery and a kind of imprisonment to both parties. |

|Poet’s Message/Conclusion |To His Coy Mistress and Ghazal |
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|To His Coy Mistress and Ghazal depict romantic love in ways that are almost exact opposites. In To His Coy Mistress, the |
|narrator’s impatience threatens to rob the relationship of any sense of romance as the he tries to persuade his mistress into |
|his bed with emotional blackmail, but the narrator in Ghazal wants to be wooed and is more concerned that they will always be |
|‘good friends,’ willing to surrender at the right moment to the patience and determination of her lover. |