Poetry Blog #2

The poem "To His Coy Mistress" by Andrew Marvell discusses the evanescence of human life and the inevitability of death. Throughout the poem, the speaker addresses his mistress, who is apparently reluctant to engage in any serious love affair and has been slow to respond to his sexual advances. In the first stanza of the poem, the speaker describes how passionately they could love each other if they had "but world enough and time." Continuing to muse about this hopeless fantasy, the speaker further declares to his mistress that her coyness would be unfounded in such a case and she would have no choice but to submit to his advances. The speaker then returns to reality in stanza two. Lamenting  the ephemeral nature of life, he remarks to his mistress that "at my back, I always hear / Time's wingèd chariot hurrying near," and that eventually her "beauty shall no more be found." In the final stanza, the speaker concludes that since their time on Earth is relatively short, his mistress should therefore requite his attempts to love her and that they should make the best of the remaining time they have in life.

Archibald Macleish's poem "You, Andrew Marvell" also addresses the subject of the evanescence of life, though to a greater extent. The title of the poem is a direct allusion the Marvell's poem "To His Coy Mistress," which serves to establish the connection between the themes addressed by the two poems. In this poem, Macleish compares death to the ever-approaching, "always coming on of" night: "To feel the always coming on / The always rising of the night: / To feel creep up the curving east / The  earthly chill of dusk and slow." The constantly approaching nature of the darkness within these lines suggests that death will eventually encompass everyone. Moreover, as the poem progresses, the speaker begins to list locations that have already been enshrouded by the darkness originating in the East. These references serve to symbolize the destruction of past civilization; not only will time eventually claim human life, but it will also eventually erode human civilizations, even those in the West. Additionally, the speaker's inclusion of civilizations that reacher their peak in ancient times seems to suggest that this cycle of life and death is an old process, as old as time itself, and will continue to occur while time exists.

From his personal narrative "On Becoming a Poet," excerpted from his book Weather of Words, Mark Strand cites "You, Andrew Marvell" as the catalyst responsible for initiating his career as a poet. In his examination of the poem, Strand contends that "You, Andrew Marvell," with its subtle, though-provoking devices, impelled him to pursue a life as a poet after he realized that the thoughts and feelings presented in the poem were very similar to his own thought and feelings. In fact, this is what intrigues me most about Strand's argument: poetry's ability to connect with its audience on a personal level. As Strand notes, we are often able to recognized and explain to at least some extent how a particular piece of poetry might attract us. For example, Strand indicated that it was his ability to identify with the figure "face down beneath the sun" whose mortality was certainly evident, a  thought that had been troubling hime for some time. Nonetheless, Strand notes that we are hardly ever able to explain why poetry attracts and arouses such deep emotions within us: "There is something about [poetry] that moves me in ways that I don't quite understand, as if it were communicating more that what is actually says.: I agree with this notion that poetry often elicits inexplicable and mysterious feelings that depend on a certain poem's content. Lyrics included in songs, after all, are a form of poetry. I can say from personal experience that lyrical poetry often conjures intense emotions that I can only begin to explain as well, so I understand Strand's position on this topic.