Comparison

Two poems that interested me the most were “Ever After” by Joyce Sutphen and “Variation of the word Sleep” by Margaret Atwood. I choose these poems because they had very similar ideas. While reading both these poems I was able to fully understand how much love the authors have for the individual they are describing. The authors describe their love in many different ways.

                Both of the stories are centered on their loved one and the process of love.  In "Ever After" the story is about her ex. She talks about how she feels now and the decay of her relationship. The poem is about everything they use to be. Throughout the story the author brings up the idea how there is no more “us” and how much love she still has. I feel the author is reminiscing on the past because she brings up the past memory of their hands clasped on the knife as they cut the wedding cake. The wedding cake slice signifies unity and I feel she used that imagery to reference the love topic. I also believe the cake imagry is used last to symbolize how she missed her loved one and is obvioulsly hurt. I also think there is a lot of space and lack of communication between them because the author says “what am I to you now that you are no longer what you used to be to me?”  This poem is mostly about the fear she faces from losing her loved one, and the end of a relationship.

The other poem Variation of the word Sleep is also about love, but it’s more of an obsessive type. The poem is about how the author wants to be everything to her lover.  The author is passionate to her lover and expresses how necessary he wants to feel.  She is obviously in love and has a strange way of expressing it. Both of these poems have a strange way of expressing love, but the topic is still the same. These two poems can also coexist with each other because I feel “Variations of the word Sleep could be the first state of love. Like falling in love because all you think about is your lover. This poem can definitely fit in that category. Whereas “Ever After” can be the end of a loving relationship where one member still has feelings and spends there time thinking about what life you to be like. “Ever After” also seems sadder just based on how she expresses her feelings. So I believe it can be incorporated in ending a good relationship.