Valentine Flashcards
“Valentine”
Nature of love, relationships. Challenging conventional ideas love and relationships. The idea of romantic, everlasting, love being fallacious (fallacy-deception). Love can be short lived and dangerous. Poem is realistic? Or cynical about love?
“I give you an onion”
Ordinaries- common - antithesis of a Valentine gift - cheap and unconventional. Duffy suggests the gift of an onion is more significant/realistic than the cliched, commercialised, gaudy tat (cheap, shiny, meaningless) usually associated with love.
“Onion, moon, wedding ring”
The onion/love - both promise light but fulfilment is not always guaranteed. Moon- symbol of love / romance, shape / colour of an onion. Wedding ring- represents the relationship/marriage of the two lovers.
Structure of Valentine
A dramatic monologue- speaker addresses ‘you’ as his/her lover.
Seven verses - three are one line, one sentence verses.
Free verse- gives the poem a direct feel - persona focuses tersely on what he/she wants to say to their lover. It/it’s refers not just to the onion but to the nature of poem is a developed metaphor - throughout the onion is compared to love. Contrasts ideas of conventional love the persons idea of love.
Tone and Emotions of Valentine
The tone of the poem is both intimate and honest, reflecting the complexities of love. The poem conveys the idea that love is a complex and multi faced emotion. It challenges traditional notions of romantic lobe and suggests that true love involves both sweetness and pain. The poems use of the onion as a symbol helps illustrate these layers of emotion and experience in love.
The Title
Saint Valentine, 3rd century Roman priest. Regarded as the patron saint of Lobe. 14th Feb - celebrated annually.
Personal Reflections
I think the poem is structured in a way which really helps to convey the positives and negatives of love. It shows that love is not all happy and content and that it is painful and unpromising. It emphasises that love is hard work and that there are many layers to it. Helps to convey the image of partners who are deeply in love but but have their ‘hard’ days which all couples have. It helps to get rid of the stereotypical image that is put onto relationships and how hard work they are.
The Role of the Reader
The poem is very engaging to readers as it shows that love can make you vulnerable and sad. This helps them to reflect on their own personal experiences with love as the poem shows that love is not always smooth sailing for everybody.
Duffy’s Unique Style
Duffy, in some of her poems talk about things that we may relate to which are known as universal themes. She interprets this poem well through her style of poetry as she really displays the image of love in her work in a real and unstereotypical manner. Her use of language and metaphors in the poem really help us to realise that when we’re in love, we tend to ‘cling’ to the person we love. She emphasises that this will cause us pain and hurt as love is not always happy and beautiful and that it is a upsetting thing to experience.
Universal Themes
This poem will resonate with a lot of readers as mostly everybody in their life will experience the grief of love and how it impacts us mentally and/or physically. This poem dives deep into the meaning of love and the nature of relationships and suggests that it’s okay to have bad days in your relationship and that not everybody will have a perfect relationship. This poem also helps us readers to be comfortable with being vulnerable when it comes to love and that it is important to always express your feelings to your loved one and to not hold back when feeling sad or unhappy.
Comparison with Other Poems
‘Valentine’ is very similar to ‘The Way My Mother Speaks’ because hey both display an image of love for their partner or mother. In The Way My Mother Speaks, it shows that the writer struggles without the comfort of her mother being with her as she is dealing with anxiety and stress, so she’s finds ways of coping without her as she moves on in life. This relates to Valentine as it shows how people may experience anxiety within their relationship or without their partner. Shows that leaving your loved ones behind is not an easy thing to do and can really affect them mentally.
Final Thoughts
The poem has a huge impact on the readers as it has a truly deep meaning to it engages the reader really effectively. The poem sends out a string message about the reality of love and relationships and gives readers the opportunity to really feel emotionally towards the poem as they may relate to it. It helps readers to be able to feel comfort in their own feelings towards the relationship they may be in or to try feel at ease when you are no longer with your loved one. Valentine may not just be about love but it also has some history to it and how ‘Valentines’ is created. The onion mentioned in the poem is to reflect on the many layers to a relationship and that it takes a while to really settle down and is something which is not easy to get through to.
