Poetry and Love
Rhetorical Analysis of Love Poems
The two poems “Magic of Love” by Helen Farries and “Love Poem” by John Frederick Nims are both poems with the central theme of love. The ways that these two authors express this theme differ significantly from each other and show two spectrums of love in literature. Through their use of syntax, diction, rhyme, and meter, these poets portray love in a unique and personal manner that illicit specific emotions from the reader for a variety of possible reasons, which will be analyzed in this essay. The poem by Helen Farries, “Magic of Love”, immediately has a light-hearted tone due to the positive choice in diction, the third word of the entire poem being “wonderful” which strongly backs up the happy mood. The diction remains lighthearted throughout the rest of the poem and almost suffocates the quality of it with an overbearing of cliché similes and sensory words. This also causes a sort of child-like quality to the poem as they are also extremely low-end diction words that even the most illiterate would understand and causes the poem to seem like it is designed with immature or childish personalities in mind, evident from whimsical phrases such as “the wonderful MAGIC OF LOVE!” The meter and stressed syllables of the poem create a very distinct sing-song-like quality as the rhythm and rhyme copy that of a child’s nursery rhyme. The stress on the last line of the first and last stanza on this already extremely loud and intense poem (due to syntax) is an unnecessary loop that brings the reader back to the topic. This is due to the choice in diction, the central topic, love, is only named three times in the entirety of this work yet is mentioned as “it” in nearly every single line. The childish quality calls for an obvious rhyme scheme, two internal rhymes and two end rhymes in each stanza. This paired with punctuation limited to dashes, commas, and exclamation points to end each sentence, makes this piece overtly boisterous to
The two poems “Magic of Love” by Helen Farries and “Love Poem” by John Frederick Nims are both poems with the central theme of love. The ways that these two authors express this theme differ significantly from each other and show two spectrums of love in literature. Through their use of syntax, diction, rhyme, and meter, these poets portray love in a unique and personal manner that illicit specific emotions from the reader for a variety of possible reasons, which will be analyzed in this essay. The poem by Helen Farries, “Magic of Love”, immediately has a light-hearted tone due to the positive choice in diction, the third word of the entire poem being “wonderful” which strongly backs up the happy mood. The diction remains lighthearted throughout the rest of the poem and almost suffocates the quality of it with an overbearing of cliché similes and sensory words. This also causes a sort of child-like quality to the poem as they are also extremely low-end diction words that even the most illiterate would understand and causes the poem to seem like it is designed with immature or childish personalities in mind, evident from whimsical phrases such as “the wonderful MAGIC OF LOVE!” The meter and stressed syllables of the poem create a very distinct sing-song-like quality as the rhythm and rhyme copy that of a child’s nursery rhyme. The stress on the last line of the first and last stanza on this already extremely loud and intense poem (due to syntax) is an unnecessary loop that brings the reader back to the topic. This is due to the choice in diction, the central topic, love, is only named three times in the entirety of this work yet is mentioned as “it” in nearly every single line. The childish quality calls for an obvious rhyme scheme, two internal rhymes and two end rhymes in each stanza. This paired with punctuation limited to dashes, commas, and exclamation points to end each sentence, makes this piece overtly boisterous to