StudentShare
Contact Us
Sign In / Sign Up for FREE
Search
Go to advanced search...

Poem response: One Perfect Rose - Research Paper Example

Cite this document
Summary
Your Name Name of of Professor Dorothy Parker’s “One Perfect Rose” Dorothy Parker’s poem “One Perfect Rose” is one that is characteristic of her writing in general. It sparkles with wit and is a comment on the importance given to wealth and money in the twentieth century that had changed norms of living and writing that had existed earlier…
Download full paper File format: .doc, available for editing
GRAB THE BEST PAPER94.5% of users find it useful
Poem response: One Perfect Rose
Read Text Preview

Extract of sample "Poem response: One Perfect Rose"

Download file to see previous pages

It can also be seen to portray the changing modes of self-expression in poets who wrote during the twentieth century. The poem talks of the kind of love that is usually expressed in classical poetry. The symbol of love is a rose that can communicate feelings of love and faithfulness. In such forms of poetry that existed in earlier centuries, the ideas of love were simpler and were based on a patriarchal hierarchy where men would occupy the dominant position. The position of the subject would always be the man.

He would be the lover who would then have the prerogative to send a token of his love to the beloved who would be the woman. The beloved would occupy the position of the object as she would not be in a position to take any action on her own. This would be an intensely sexist position to take as far as one’s ideological leaning is concerned. However, the society of those times sanctified such gender relations. What Parker’s poem does is to make the anachronistic nature of such poetry very clear to her readership which was a part of the twentieth century.

The rose that was till then a symbol of love is built up as exactly that during the first two stanzas where the rose becomes the symbol of the love between the lover and the beloved. This stanza talks of a relationship of love that operates in a timeless and non-economic manner. It is therefore, in a certain sense, other-worldly. This is to say that the love that is talked about is divorced from its materiality. The symbolism of the rose deliberately takes love away from the world and establishes it as something that exists in the realm of the pure.

The problem with this approach is that it fails to take a view of what really exists between lovers. The real relations of production in the society are left unchanged. The second part of the poem where Parker talks of the narrator’s desire that her lover would gift her a limousine is very different from the first. In the first part of the poem, Parker uses language that reminds one of the love poetry that was written in medieval England. However, in the second part of the poem, the language and the images that are employed are modern and contemporary.

The content is referred to in a matter of fact manner and the love between the two lovers is not sought to be turned into something that is other-worldly and divorced from the everyday realities of the world. The economic aspects of life are extremely important in the love that is a part of the third stanza of this poem. Apart from this, the stanza also points to the material aspect of the twentieth century. This is not to say that materialism was not a part of the kind of love that existed in earlier times; it had however, been acknowledged more readily in the twentieth century.

The limousine becomes a symbol of this materialism that animated the twentieth century and was a part of every aspect of it. What Parker does through this act of hers is to undercut works of literature and other arts that propagate such images and understandings of love. To make clear the social and even ethical aspects of love is what Parker does, through this short poem. Parker’s poem talks about love in a way that was different from those of the classical poets. In this sense, she records not just the changing social norms regarding love around her but also the changing ways in

...Download file to see next pages Read More
Cite this document
  • APA
  • MLA
  • CHICAGO
(“Poem response: One Perfect Rose Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words”, n.d.)
Retrieved from https://studentshare.org/literature/1480221-poem-response-one-perfect-rose
(Poem Response: One Perfect Rose Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 Words)
https://studentshare.org/literature/1480221-poem-response-one-perfect-rose.
“Poem Response: One Perfect Rose Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 Words”, n.d. https://studentshare.org/literature/1480221-poem-response-one-perfect-rose.
  • Cited: 0 times

CHECK THESE SAMPLES OF Poem response: One Perfect Rose

Annabel Lee and Romeo and Juliet

Even though some may deduce from these pieces that love is tainted by nature, when holding it up to the biblical standard – of which Poe and Shakespeare were quite familiar – the love described was not perfect at all compared to the benchmark: “Love is patient, love is kind.... This is seen to be the case across various forms of literature, including Edgar Allan Poe's poem, “Annabel Lee,” and William Shakespeare's tragic play, Romeo and Juliet.... Various themes of love – as being excessive, covetous, unbridled, misunderstood, immortal, and doomed – are seen through the characters and their depictions in both poem and play....
8 Pages (2000 words) Essay

Metaphysical Poetry: Richard Wilbur

His rhetoric exploits the power of extended analogies, juxtapositions of extremes, a plain and colloquial style of speech and dramatic argumentation that includes argumentation through formal structure, association and punning word play to procure an emotional and intellectual response to experience.... Wilbur employs the same seventeenth century metaphysical poets' rhetorical bag of tricks to assume, maintain, and shift an argumentative stance within a single poem....
11 Pages (2750 words) Essay

A Discussion, Comparison and Contrasting of the Poems Grass and The Mist by Carl Sandburg

Now, if one chooses a different set of words, say rhyming words, it definitely cannot create the same affect and that is probably why he decides to work with free verse.... Again, in the next line, the author uses tone for an awe-inspiring effect when he writes, “But one passes me” The narrator in the poem, mist, also proclaims that it “Was at the first of things and it will be the last” (Sandburg).... In the poem “Grass” Sandburg uses the form of free verse, eschewing any rhyme scheme or meter....
2 Pages (500 words) Essay

The Different Aspects of Reality

Nevertheless, such impossibility teaches the reader to be realistic and to realize that there is no perfect lover in the world.... Although it is the fantasy that masks John Donne's realism in “Song,” Frederick Nims' “Love Poem” is downright honest in saying that perfect love does not exist and that if one loves another then one has to embrace all of his or her lover's shortcomings.... While some say that one should embrace reality as it is, others believe that one should change his views about it in order to stomach it....
4 Pages (1000 words) Essay

Personal Response to Poems

In the first five poems, the immediate impression is one of childhood memories and perceptions.... The feeling aroused here is one of concern for the potential destruction of the little boy's happiness.... All manage to present an honest, open response to experiences, as if these were unique events for that particular child, as indeed they are.... For example, 'Love poem' by John Frederick Nims tells of somebody accepting the beloved's faults or apparent inadequacies, the small, everyday things that do not really matter, because the essence of the person is far greater than these, and he loves her for that....
3 Pages (750 words) Essay

Mother and Poet - Historical Figure of Laura Savio

This work of the poet must be examined within the context of her earlier work in Aurora Leigh, where she described the poet's act of creation as one that is invariably attributed to be male, since poets are those who produce poems which “are men, if true poems.... The poem “Mother and Poet” is based upon the historical figure of Laura Savio, an Italian woman who was a patriot and raised her sons to uphold nationalistic ideals, only to end up losing both of them to uphold those same ideals....
4 Pages (1000 words) Essay

The Teacher Action Plan for the Poetry Unit for Grades 9th and 10th

Lots of poetry books, refreshments, chairs in a circle; invitation at the door to take a straw “sip” some juice and find a poem that you like and would share with the class (sitting down, no presentation).... Students will be able to begin analyzing a poem....
16 Pages (4000 words) Case Study

Emily Dickinson's poetry

Poetry of Emily Dickinson, one of the most illustrious American poets, is marked by the unaffected and sensible way of communicating of thoughts and ideas.... The poet herself inquired about liveliness of her verses in one of her letters: “Are you too deeply occupied to say if my verse is alive?... Judging by this definition, one can conclude that poetry is what makes a person's heart pant and touches strings of one's soul....
2 Pages (500 words) Essay
sponsored ads
We use cookies to create the best experience for you. Keep on browsing if you are OK with that, or find out how to manage cookies.
Contact Us