The topic of love is without a doubt the most often written about subject in poetry. Love Poems are easily associated with flowery language and grand sweeping metaphors, to make the subject of the poem seem as flawless and ethereal as humanly possible. However, there are notable subversions to this general rule, as seen in William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130, which employs descriptive metaphors to emphasize how ordinary the speaker’s lover is. Similarly, Theodore Roethke’s Elegy For Jane also utilizes metaphors while mimicking the form of the sonnet to describe his dead student. Additionally, both poems utilize soothing and pleasing sound to give the reader a sense of the emotion that the speaker feels towards the person the poems are written …show more content…
In 130, Shakespeare already has a solid rhyme scheme and the simple rhyming of the words at the end of each line creates a more solid foundation for the poem’s content to rest upon. He uses much more verbally pleasing arrangement of words when describing the beautiful things in the world, “I have seen roses damask’d, red and white,” “...in some perfumes is there more delight” “...music hath a far more pleasing sound” (Shakespeare, 85). This use of gentle sounding words, devoid of any harsh or grating vowel sounds serves to elevate the beauty of the metaphors described. Conversely, when he describes his mistress, “...when she walks, treads on the ground,” “...the breath that from my mistress reeks” “...black wires grow on her head” (Shakespeare, 85) there are must harsher sounding vowels as well as consonants. This breaks the spell created by the pretty metaphors, and indeed breaks the reader out of the expectation of easy flowing and sound language through and through. This plays into the theme of subversion that 130 thrives upon, the speaker creates the expectation of the conventional beauty that one would find in a love poem, and then subverts it by describing his lover with harsher sounds, painting her in a more realistic