Pub #5

            Poetry is more than words that rhyme and stanza lines, they are words put together carefully to express feelings, emotions, experiences, etc. There are endless themes that poets write about, but one theme many have read about is love. It is a topic that is not only common, but it is relatable. One is able to sense the poet’s tone, whether it is mourning, dreadful, dark, or content and enlightening. By the choice of words, the reader is able to imagine a picture image in their minds.

            W.H. Auden’s poem “Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone” is about love, but not in a hopeful or overall happy tone. One of the themes is “stopping.” Auden writes about everything stopping. For example, “ stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,” (Auden 471) is an intro to how she is pointing out that many things stop and are not forever. Mainly Auden is narrowing down on the fact that love is not permanent, “ I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong” (Auden 471). This is also a sense of a loss of love in that the main person had love once, but at a certain point she no longer had that same love any longer.

            In the poem “Love” by Rupert Brooke it is clear that love is not viewed in a content tone. Brooke writes about love that his broken, dark views on love. He explains how love can be slowly lost, “But they know love grows colder. Grows false and dull…But darkens and dies out from kiss to kiss” (Brooke). The love that was experienced or that he/she had descended into much less than what they had initially. This can also be analyzed as loss of love. The poem illustrates an image on how that love was lost and how it died down.

            George Michael in the band Wham! came out with a song called Last Christmas in the late 1980s. It is a song that is still played throughout the years during the winter holiday. It is a song that many can relate to and put into their own situations. It is a song about heartbreak and love that used to be alive. The overall tone of the song is heartache, the person who is singing wants to let the other know how she hurt him, and that he is moving on in the end.

            The poems “Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone” and “Love” relate to “Last Christmas” because they write above love in a negative and saddening tone. There is explanation of lost love and their experience with love. The poems tell a story and allow the reader and listener to visualize that experience and how the main character felt at the moment.

Works Cited

Auden, W.H. “Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone.” The Norton Introduction To

Literature. Edited by Peter Simon, 10^th ed, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.,

2011, pp. 470-471.

Brooke, Rupert. “Love.” Poets. 1913. Web. May 10 2017.

Wham. “Last Christmas.” Rec. 1986. Azlyrics. May 10 2017.