Talking In Bed Flashcards
(10 cards)
Theme:
love, trust, isolation, time, relationships
‘Talking in bed ought to be easiest’
-superlative ‘easiest’ suggests that is the pinnacle of ease + communication should be natural and come easily
-‘lying’ with the double entendre of not telling the truth as well + the couple is keeping secrets from each other
-modal verb ‘ought’ suggests that emotional intimacy should naturally follow the physical
‘Lying together there goes back so far, An emblem of two people being honest’
-ambiguous + lying physically together but emotionally they are separate as both parties and withholding the truth
-‘embem’
‘Yet more and more time passes silently’
‘Outside, the wind’s incomplete unrest Builds and disperses clouds about the sky’
‘Or not untrue and not unkind’
Structure:
-curtailed sonnet with 12 lines rather 14 + associated with loss and the feeling of isolation
- Metrical pattern of poem is irregular, the shifts in metre adding to the sense of discomfort and awkwardness
- Many half-rhymes: “easiest”, “honest” and “unrest” / “horizon” and “isolation” - sense of discord. Rhyming triplet in final stanza - “find”, “kind”, “unkind” - reinforces the idea that this is a universal truth
- Enjambment - creates a sense of fluidity. Suggests that the speaker struggles to find words - reflective of the lack of communication in the relationship
- Aubade is love poem in which lovers revel in their contentment together before their imminent parting - Larkin subverts the aubade; his speaker only finds introspection and emptiness, the dawn presumably offers relief from this silence and lack of communication
-cesura used to show the awkwardness and distance
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