Love Spoken In An Unusual Way

Majority of poems are about love or the harsh after taste of a relationship which was once sweet, to a relationship gone bitter. Carol Ann Duffy's poem "Valentines" and Julie Sheehan's poem "Hate", both express love.

When you first take a look at Julie Sheehan's poem "Hate", you would assume that the poem is about hate, but instead the poem is about love. The poem given from a woman's perspective. She goes into a great depth of details, attempting to make the readers and herself feel as though she hates this person she speaks about. When you clearly get the sense that this a woman that is obsessed with this person she speaks about. For example, she states " Everything about me hates everything about you… The history of this key-chain hates you… My aorta hates you.  Also my ancestors… Layers of hate, a parfait.”  Here she gives a detailed list of hate which truly  symbolizes how she constantly thinks of him, and sees him in every detail of her life. Another example that's give strong proof of this is when she goes on by saying, "My lungs, duplicitous twins, expand with the utter validity of my hate, which can never have enough of you.”  Shes admitting that her every breath is a thought of him. You get the sense that she  fears the power of this love, and would prefer to think of it as hate. 

Opposed to Julie Sheehan's poem "Hate", Carol Ann Duffy poem "Valentines", describes the love between two people and how one uses an onions to represent the love they share. She also goes on by using the scent of an onion to describe if one was to leave the relationship, the lethal scent of an onion will for ever be cling to them, no matter if new love was to be found. In this poem She rejects the gifts typically associated with Valentine’s Day, such as ‘red-rose’, ‘satin cloth’, ‘cute card’, ‘kissogram’ but by bringing an ‘Onion’ as a gift which we find in the second line as “I give you an onion”.This poem symbolizes how real love is. The different layers of the onion are like the layers of someone’s personality. Beauty is just skin deep, but discovery of true character deepens one’s love. Carol describes a beautiful idea that true love is not based on the color of the skin or appearance, but in discovering the true personality of the other.

The two poems share the theme of love, Duffy's poem tone was a bit more aggressive than Sheehan's, whose poem was more in the tone of an obsessed woman. I feel that unlike Sheehan's poem, Duffy's poem can be seen from both a females and males perspective, but the male perspective more seldom. Both poems have an extensive use of negative language. 

I really enjoyed both poems and how the authors of these poems describe love in such different styles. I feel like both poets succeeded when it came to developing a connection with the poem.