Relationships come in different forms, and can be love or hate.

Theme: Relationships come in different forms, and can be love or hate.

Explanation of theme:

The theme I have chosen is that relationships can have different sides and can be either love or hate. I think this explains the poems I chose because they talk about the different sorts of relationships people have with each other. For instance, the first poem talks about the pain a person obviously went through, and this is one side of love that ends in heartbreak and hate. However, the other poems talk more about different kinds of love, like friendships and romantic love that also mean a lot and can have a strong effect on people. I think this theme is very strong because it lets us know that no relationship is predictable and each relationship goes in it’s own direction, where friendship might lead to love, or love might lead to heartbreak and hate.

Goal:

My goal is to make sure that people understand the different types of relationships out there and the possibilities. We need to be open and let relationships run their course to know if it’s true love and friendship, or if it is just going to end in pain. I want the readers to realize that there is no right or wrong kind of relationship but that we need to give other people our time and energy to try and make things work, but if they don’t, then it just wasn’t meant to be. We should accept love in whatever form it comes to us.

Poems:

1) How to kill a living thing

Neglect it

Criticize it to its face

Saw how it kills the light

Traps all the rubbish

Bores you with its green

Continually

Harden your heart

Then

Cut it down close

To the root as possible

Forget it

For a week or a month

Return with an axe

Split it with one blow

Insert a stone

To keep the wound wide open

Eibhlin Nic Eochaidh

2) Be Not Too Hard

Be not too hard for life is short

And nothing is even to man;

Be not too hard when he is sold and bought

For he must manage as best he can;

Be not too hard when he gladly dies

Defending things he does not own;

Be not too hard when he tells lies

And if his heart is sometimes lie a stone

Be not too hard – for soon he dies,

Often no wiser than he began;

Be not too hard for life is short

And nothing is given to man.

Christopher Logue

3) True Love

In the middle of the night, when we get up

After making love, we look at each other in

Complete friendship, we know so fully

What the other has been doing. Bound to each other

Like mountaineers coming down from a mountain,

Bound with the tie of the delivery-room,

We wander down the hall to the bathroom, I can

Hardly walk, I wobble through the granular

Shadowless air, I know where you are

With my eyes closed, we are bound to each other

With huge invisible threads, our sexes

Muted, exhausted, crushed, the whole

Body a sex – surely this

Is the most blessed time of my life,

Our children asleep in their beds, each fate

Like a vein of abiding mineral

Not discovered yet. I sit

On the toilet in the night, you are somewhere in the room,

I open the window and snow has fallen in a

Steep drift, against the pane, I

Look up, into it,

A wall of cold crystals, silent

And glistening, I quietly call to you

And you come and hold my hand and I say

I cannot see beyond it, I cannot see beyond it.

Sharon Olds

4) Last Night

The next day, I am almost afraid.

Love? It was more like dragonflies

In the sun, 100 degrees at noon,

The ends of their abdomens stuck together, I

Close my eyes when I remember. I hardly

Knew myself, like something twisting and

Twisting out of a chrysalis,

Enormous, without language, all

Head, all shut eyes, and the humming

Like madness, the way they writhe away,

And do not leave, back, back,

Away, back. Did I know you? No kiss,

No tenderness---more like killing, death-grip

Holding to life, genitals

Like violent hands clasped tight

Barely moving, more like being closed

In a great jaw and eaten, and the screaming

I groan to remember it, and when we started

To die, then I refuse to remember,

The way a drunkard forgets. After,

You held my hands extremely hard as my

Body moved in shudders like the ferry when its

Axle is loosed past engagement, you kept me

Sealed exactly against you, our hairlines

Wet as the arc of a gateway after

A cloudburst, you secured me in your arms till I slept---

That was love, and we woke in the morning

Clasped, fragrant, buoyant, that was

The morning after love.

Sharon Olds

5) All because of you.

I awake each day with a smile

And greet it with a laugh;

The world is a treasure to me

Because of you.

Every time I think of something sad,

I replace the thought- with you!

My mind is instantly changed

And my heart is filled with gladness.

Every breath I take is meant for you,

I live this life surrounded in joy

And I bathe in the promise of your love,

My soul belongs to you.

Each time I see something beautiful

I want to take it and bring it to you;

My life has so much meaning now

All because of you.

Kate Reneigh Woodruff