Week 1, Question #7

Susan Hines
Ms. Amy Bolaski
English 103
June 27, 2009

Week 1, Question #7

Compare/contrast the two versions of “True Love”.

In comparing the two different versions of the poem “True Love” I can see and I can feel that each of the authors, Wislawa Szymborska and Sharon Olds, are each expressing a different sense of true love, one unattainable and one a reality. Wislawa is telling me what true love looks like as she describes the happy couple and she gives my mind an image of them laughing and allows my mind to imagine what the couple is saying to each other. Wislawa uses sarcasm to describe what true love feels like by depicting it as something worth putting up on a pedestal. I feel that she uses sarcasm to mask her jealousy and her pain. I feel that what Wislawa really feels is a longing for a true love that she cannot imagine herself ever getting to experience. In contrast, Sharon is telling me how true love feels by sharing her intimate thoughts. Sharon wants me to imagine and feel the love that she has which encapsulates her within its space which is the time and place she is in at the moment every moment. She wants me to feel the emotional peace that comes with true love and she shows me what true love looks like as she sits on the toilet and love is still there. Sharon found her true love years ago and still is embracing that feeling every day; the last line of her poem says “I cannot see beyond it” (579). Sharon is telling me that she cannot imagine her life without true love. Sharon has what Wislawa longs for.