The poem The Lover by Don Patterson. :: English Literature

The poem The lover by Don Patterson.The Lover - Don PattersonThe poem The Lover by Don Patterson explores traditional nonions of mess and romantic love. The title represents both of these ideas, asthe lover is a tarot card used by fortune-tellers to tell you your mountain, and the lover has connotations of romance. He a wish well uses vividimagery describes how a human is knocked eat up by a car, and againstthe odds, is brought back to life because of love.The poem has three stanzas of equal length and it has a half rhyme.The main theme is identified by how love is the strongest forcefulness on theplanet.Pattersonbegins by saying,Poor mortals with your horoscopes and blood tests.This is in such a tone, that it is suggesting that a higher being isspeaking, and through references later in the poem, it seems possiblethat the narrator is a classic Greek god.Pattersonmentions horoscopes and blood tests. These are bothmethods that humans try in vain to predict the future. Blood test s lay down connotations of illness, which becomes relevant later in thepoem.Even if the plane lands you safely, why should you not return to yourhome in flames or ruins, your wife absconded, the children blind anddecease in their cots?Patterson uses very emotive and powerful imagery to try to be apoint that our small lives are irrelevant in the look of the world. Hethen summarises this stanza by saying,Only the lover walks upon the earth, careless of what fate preparesfor him.This quote suggests that the lover is immune to the day-to-dayharshness of the world. His word picking also effectively displays idesof immortality. It tells us that love can protect you from the perilsof the world.In the second stanza, Pattersonintroduces the main incident in thepoem. A car knocks down the subject.So you step out at the lights, almost as if like a shot you know you arethe special one. The women in the windshield lifting away her rimedcry.This metaphor is very effective as it has clear con notations of timestanding(a) still and fear. Patterson is now writing on a personal basis,as before he spoke generally.He continues his biblical references when he says, A white mask on astick. This imagery describes Atropos, the Greek god of death(somewhat like Grim Reaper) When the time has come, they come to analyzeto take you away. He continues the theme of the underworld by saying,The sun leaves like a rocket the sky goes out.Pattersons effective imagery has apocalyptic connotations. This fiction compares the flash of a rocket to the brightness of the sun.