Song for Last Year's Wife by Brian Patten Analysis
- Created by: Gemma
- Created on: 22-05-13 09:59
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- Song for Last Year's Wife by Brian Patten
- Binary Opposites
- Absence and presence
- Alice is not there but he still feels her presence
- Imagining Alice is there
- She hasn't changed
- He hasn't got the physical body there
- Imagining Alice is there
- Loss comes now and touches me
- Personification
- Loss is absence but it touches him so it is present
- He is trying to recreate Alice
- To get closure
- Is it self-indulgent or is it a coping mechanism?
- To get closure
- Alice is not there but he still feels her presence
- Absence and presence
- Language
- A year now
- Sums up isolation
- Another mouth feeding from me
- intellectually?
- New lover?
- Reminds him of Alice
- Feeding his loss
- Physical love?
- He is the one doing the nourishing
- Financially?
- I send out my spies
- My = obsessive/ controlling
- Like a king or a leader
- Spies = friends?
- Are the spies him looking back into his memory?
- My = obsessive/ controlling
- Touched by this same hour
- They are connected by time
- Song for Last Year's Wife
- Throw-away line
- Dressed in familiar clothes
- Link between her personality and her clothes
- Metaphor
- Is he looking backinto his memory?
- Link between her personality and her clothes
- Perhaps not even conscious of our anniversary
- She hasn't forgotten about their anniversary
- It's just gone
- They should be linked by their conscience
- She is not
- She hasn't forgotten about their anniversary
- The Earth's still as hard
- Hard = difficult
- The world is a difficult place
- Or, the world is the same place
- Or, it is winter, when the ground is hard
- Winter
- Isolation and lonliness
- Winter
- Or, it is winter, when the ground is hard
- Or, the world is the same place
- The world is a difficult place
- Hard = difficult
- Begins with direct adress
- Alice
- After that, he uses the pronoun 'you'
- He is lonely and isolated
- Tell me your body's as firm
- You're fine
- Touch
- Firm
- Warm
- Why would the spies be touching her?
- I send out my spies
- My = obsessive/ controlling
- Like a king or a leader
- Spies = friends?
- Are the spies him looking back into his memory?
- My = obsessive/ controlling
- Are the spies trying to tell him that Alice has moved on?
- I send out my spies
- A year now
- Themes
- Mourning and Melancholia
- Mourning = someone has gone or died
- Public mourning
- Closure
- Author is mourning loss of Alice
- Melancholy = personal/ internal feeling. Deep feeling of sadness
- No closure
- The author has had no closure
- He still sends out spies
- So he writes a poem to get closure
- Or does he want to indulge himself in the loss rather than find a solution, closure?
- He still sends out spies
- The author has had no closure
- The author is melancholy because he has lost love
- Love had not the right to walk out of me
- His in love with the idea of being in love
- Winter
- Season of melancholy
- Isolated
- Inevitably, he is thinking of her in this month
- No closure
- Mourning = someone has gone or died
- Mourning and Melancholia
- DRAMATIC MONOLOGUE
- Tone and Mood
- Treats he as though she is dead
- She has just dumped him
- It was a bitter end to their relationship
- She has just dumped him
- At the start, the reader feels sympathy for the author
- As the poem goes on, he gets more angry and bitter
- He feels like he's the victim
- He's more interested in his own feelings
- He feels like he's the victim
- You think that he is mourning the loss of his wife or lover and she has died
- As the poem goes on, he gets more angry and bitter
- Tone changes from sad to bitter
- The narrator is quite creepy and obsessed
- The poem is self-indulgent.
- It is his way of coping with his separation from Alice and from love
- It is his way of getting closure
- It is his way of coping with his separation from Alice and from love
- Treats he as though she is dead
- Binary Opposites
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