WHAT WILL YOUR VERSE BE? Published writing #5

“We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. Poetry, beauty, romance and love, these are what we stay alive for. The powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?"  - Dead Poets Society

Poetry is the most wonderful thing in the world.  It can be a good way to express people’s feeling through writing poems.  For example, a sense of missing for lover.  There are many poets writing about love.  They love their lover, and miss their lover.  In The River – Merchant’s Wife: A Letter by Ezra Pound and Stop All Clocks, Cut Off Telephone by W. H. Auden, both them express the deep sense of missing for lover in poem.  Missing lover is very sad.

For The River – Merchant’s Wife: A Letter, the original poem was written by the Chinese poet Li Bai.  The Whole poem write about a businessman’s wife’s memory and love, and describe the wife’s concrete life in different time.  The first six sentences describe her childhood with her husband.  It was very happy.  From the seventh sentence, it describes the newly married life.  However, after the merchant went out, the tone of this poem became sad because the wife was missing her husband.  The poem draw a picture to express the sad feeling, and this is the same way with Stop All Clocks, Cut Off Telephone.  It can be imaged that the river is whirling, monkeys make sorrowful noise on the mountain, moss become deep and leaves fall on the ground.

For Stop All Clocks, Cut Off Telephone, it was written for the dead lover.  Poet missed his lover and wanted to stop the time.  The tone of this poem is also very sad.  “Silence the pianos and with muffled drum”, “aeroplanes circle moaning overhead”, and “put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves”, all the scenes become a picture that express the sad feeling of poet.  The last two paragraph, poet said the lover is most important for him.  “Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun; Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood. For nothing now can ever come to any good” (Auden, 14-16).  After the lover died, all the good things are gone for him.  The dead lover is everything for him.

The difference between The River – Merchant’s Wife: A Letter and Stop All Clocks, Cut Off Telephone is speaker.  The speaker for The River – Merchant’s Wife: A Letter is the merchant’s wife.  Poet through the wife’s memory, perspective and emotion to write this poem, and express the love between the merchant and his wife.  However, for Stop All Clocks, Cut Off Telephone, the speaker is poet himself.  Poet describe directly the love to his love.

Even though there are many different poems, poets always want to express their emotion through the poems.  Therefore, writing poems are a good way to express emotion.  Poems are crystallization of love.  “We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. Poetry, beauty, romance and love, these are what we stay alive for. The powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse” (Dead Poets Society).