Deep Love, Passionate Desire, and Intriguing Mystery Are...

Gracie Smith Literary Heritage 2201 27 October 2011 As Long as it’s a Love Letter Deep love, passionate desire, and intriguing mystery are conveyed through the use of literary devices such as symbolism and metaphor in Kim Addonizio’s â€Å"First Poem for You† and William Meredith’s â€Å"The Illiterate† and aide in supporting the themes that intimate relationships can be both intriguing and frightening at the same time. Love is conveyed in â€Å"The Illiterate† through the simple idea of a letter. The letter is used to symbolize a woman. This man has never received a letter from anyone and therefore one can conclude that he has never been with a woman and is unsure and anxious to find out what the letter, or the woman, means. The letter in the†¦show more content†¦In â€Å"First Poem for You† the tattoos are used as symbols just as the letter is in â€Å"The Illiterate.† The specific symbol chosen in this poem to represent a relationship between and man and a woman is a tattoo. This is certainly chose n purposefully because the process of getting something tattooed permanently on your body is painful! The ink is literally sewn into your skin with a needle. Though the process is painful, he still gets the tattoo and has more than one. This specific symbol is used because no relationship exists and prospers without some kind of pain. Therefore, if both people want to be in the relationship they will press on through the pain. In both poems symbolism is used to magnify potential flaws in relationships but present the argument that though there may be pain it is still worth perusing. Also the use of metaphor is intertwined with the usage of symbolism because they both work to convey the message that relationships can be intriguing and intimidating. The metaphor is comparing the letter to a woman. However, the man cannot read the letter so he must shamefully look to others to tell him what the words mean. The man â€Å"has no other means/ To find out what it says than to ask someone† (Meredith, â€Å"The Illiterate† 7-8). This is literally saying that he has never received a letter from anyone and does not have any other way of knowing the meaning of the letter than to ask someone who has received a letter in the past