In my essay I am going to compare and contrast two poems: “Love Poem” by John Frederick Nims and “The Forms of Love” by George Oppen. The feeling of astonishment is captivated in the poem of George Oppen “The Forms of Love”, which represents an author’s chance meeting of love. The poem starts with the description of how the two parked near the lake, the grass was white, and the moon was rising. Then the speaker remembers how they were getting out of the car. The speaker and the poet are same person.
The speaker does not speak to anyone as he just recollects some events related to his being in live with a girl who is now his wife. The poem itself is spoken in a soft melodious soothing calm low tone which seems to be similar with the tone which helps to tell fairy tales to children. Such a tone brings some nebulosity and indistinctness to the poem as though the speaker is not sure wether the events he describes are real or is a fable illusion. The action takes place in nature’s lap, in the fields beside a lake “when the moon rose”. The two parked in fields and saw a lake; they made their minds to walk “To where it would have wet our feet”. These two people were not sure about what they saw, “Whether it could be lake or fog”, was it a clear image or a shadowy illusion.
I think the speaker does not try to convince a reader of anything, because the tone is not persuasive but soothing, the author feels compelled to speak in order to share his recollections with readers, he possesses vivid recollections of his first endeavor with his wife, so he decides to speak about it. I can see no conflicts or tension in this poem, it is calm and soft.
There are some words in the poem that help the reader to analyze this piece of literature. The word “ancient” is used to describe a car, does it mean that the car is extremely old to call it just “old”, or maybe it means that the car is old-fashioned. The next unusual use of the word is “white grass”, which gives a great space for thinking over this issue. Thus the “white grass” can be a definite indication of the season, the cold weather or of visual illusion; it might become white because of the fog or rime. “Grope our way together in the bright incredible light” means that the two were trying to find their way by groping though the light of the moon helped them to see everything clearly. Also the speaker is not sure about the image they could see, whether it was a lake or fog, here the image of fog is used to emphasize the uncertainty, nebulosity and indistinctness.
The diction used by the author fits perfectly the theme and the situation of the poem. The imagery is rather simple. When I was reading the poem I imagined such a scene: it is a late fall, the temperature is about 5-10 degrees above zero, a lake near the desert field, an old car parked on the road side, two people inebriated with alcohol and affection, they see a lake and can hardly distinguish it from fog, the moon shines brightly and leads them to the lake, one can hear nothing, they are alone in this desert field.
The next poem I am going to analyze is “Love poem” by John Frederick Nims. The person speaking is the same person as the poet. He addresses his words at the same time to the woman he loves and to all readers. He describes his woman to the readers and asks her to stay with him. It seems to me that the tone of the poem is a bit sarcastic mocking impudent insolent derisive, though tender at the same time as if the author was touched with this woman’s clumsiness. The character of the poem is the woman with whom the speaker is in love. The scene describes all the awkward actions of the character, her drawbacks and imperfectness. To my mind the poet tries to convince the reader of the fact that even imperfect person can love and be loved, that we all are imperfect and everyone has his drawbacks. I believe that the author is compelled to speak because he wants to attract her attention, to captivate her mind.
The only contradictory moment of the whole poem is that how can one prepossess another person by exposing not very nice information about this person. The total vocabulary of the poem is florid confused bizarre. There are some words that seem unusual to me; “undulant floor” means either a really wavy floor or the condition of being drunk when everything seems wavy and unstraight. “Never on time” can hardly resemble to men, maybe to a few of them; this statement resembles to women as men believe if a woman tells that she would be in a minute it must be so.
The diction fits the theme and the situation perfectly. The imagery of this poem is not simple at all. It gives us an opportunity to observe a usual woman, who is clumsy and awkward. She may appear to the reader a stout housemaid who is always breaking vases, who is a bad driver. But the author feels affection to her, he loves that “With words and people and love you move at ease”. Reading this poem one can imagine an ordinary woman – a wife, a mother, a girlfriend, a sister – who just exists in our life backing cakes, breaking vases, kissing you when you come back home.
These two poems are about different forms of love and different ways of showing your love. The first is just a pleasant recollection of some nice moments while being in love, tender and nebulous; the second is an ode to a woman, to her essence, clumsy and mocking.
Works Cited
Oppen, George. New Collected Poems New Directions paperbook. New Directions Publishing, 2008.
Graham, Lyn. George Oppen: a critical study. McFarland, 2006. (59-61).
Nims, Frederick John. Selected poems. Phoenix Series. University of Chicago Press, 1982.