Ian Iracheta Analysis of Valentine by Carol Ann Duffy

It is an unspoken universal maxim that, were one to google love poem, one would be socked by a tsunami of aggravating banality. After several centuries of the concept of love being unwittingly utilized as one of the meager nuclei around which mediocre poets and self indulgent amateurs alike have crafted their anemic bits of glorified literary dribble, it is no surprise that almost everything has already been said on the topic of this particular human emotion. Most love poems seem to follow the same stuporous pattern of mindless tedium, videlicet; love being compared to something sublime, followed by the asseveration that the love felt by this particular poet is loftier; concluding with a ludicrously fallacious our love will last forever. This threadbare tendency is exactly that which makes some rather original poems protrude in the category of literary innovativeness by further accentuating the contrast between staunch, nitwitted repetition of patterns and miraculous, actual human imagination. The latter is the case of Valentine by Carol Ann Duffy. In a John Donne-ian spirit of poetic facetiousness, she uses an onion as a metaphor for the same concept other authors ween to be commensurate with roses, cream-coloured ponies, and blue satin sashes (or any other example of the embodiment of innocuous bromide). Instead of your over-the-counter, run-off-the-mill, ennui-instigating panegyric to ardor, she takes a much more cynical approach and proves that a vegetable is just as valid an object as anything intrinsically sublime to encompass all of the aspects of this cumbersome concept. In one verse, Duffy presents the whole thesis of her poem: I am trying to be truthful. Going against the unspoken, unanimous imperative stipulating that all open invitations to define the concept of love be answered by a blatant lie, the author does not glorify the proverbial sentiment by describing it as a red rose or a satin heart. She thinks of love as being tantamount to an onion, and she supports this rummy statement by enlisting several aspects and effects that the two share. It will blind you with tears, like a lover Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips, possessive and faithful, etc. What is so innovative about this poem is that it isnt begotten from the begrudged reflections of a disgruntled troll, whom extensive experience in tremendous absence of even rudimentary serendipity has pounded into a cynical, desensitized sociopath. It is, in fact, something completely different. It is a poem that a person writes to his lover. What makes it so refreshingly ingenious is that the assertion love is an onion is seldom something youd expect from someone in the very midst of lascivious elation. At first glance, the only circumstances in which this phrase would constitute anything but a non-sequitur are if such conclusion were to be extrapolated by a hermit without even a mirror with which to simulate mendacious human contact. The sentence Love is an onion, it will make you cry is universally deemed to be confined to the rhetorical prison of the consciously avoidable in every relationship. Duffy however, does away

Ian Iracheta with the whole undercurrent of unfaltering denial, and actually uses this antagonizing stand as the thesis statement of a love poem in a display of poetic proficiency. However, this poem isnt just a jibe at sentimentality by means of comparing love to something preposterously inane. It is above all, a love poem, wherefore, it apotheosizes the aforementioned vegetable. That is to say, its implied meaning isnt love is an onion; it is covered in dirt. The opposite takes place by means of beautiful imagery created by the author: its platinum loops shrink to a wedding ring