Twenty-One Love poems by Adrienne Rich provides a window into the life of the poet. The poems center on the struggle that Rich gives to relieve herself from the complexity of the city and attain the beauty of love. The poems take place in Manhattan, New York City, one of the most crowded areas, and the reader sees the ups and downs of the poet’s life as she struggles in the overly-populated city. The poem also relates the passion that she has with her beloved, although she does not reveal the exact identity of her lover. Throughout the poem, the speaker direct rhetorical questions to both herself and her lover. In the first three sections of the poem, three poetry devices; the structure, the use of connotative words and the use of figures of speech help to emphasize the bitter and resentment tone of the poem.
The poet structures the poem in the first person narrative, which makes the poem a sincere account of the feelings of the poet persona. The first person pronoun ‘I’ that the poet allows the reader to enter into the inner world of the poet-persona and truly understand the bitterness that the poet is feeling. The poet also uses free verse in prose form, which gives the poem and easy language to read but not to understand. She seems to have cut sentences randomly and placed them under each other to create a modernist poem. This structuring presents her as a confused poet who is not sure of what she is saying. For example, in the second section of the poem, the poet talks about the moment she wakes up and says, “But I hesitate/and wake. You’ve kissed my hair/to wake me…” In these lines, the poet moves on to the next line and finishes the sentence halfway in the line. This makes the poem hard to understand since we expect that the sentence will end at the end of the line. However, this structure of lines and phrases also shows the bitterness of the poet. She is distraught it seems, because of the inability to live her emotions, that she is unable to express the way she feels.
The use of connotative words is another poetry device that emphasizes the bitterness of the poet. Throughout the poem, we understand that the poet persona is in love with someone and desire this person; however, we are not sure who this person is, nor are we sure about the gender of the person. Adrienne Rich, who was a lesbian herself, writes the first three sections of the poem in such a way that it is possible to interpret it in many ways. For instance, in the second section, she says, “Much earlier, the alarm broke us from each other…”. In the line, the pronoun ‘us’ is used ambiguously, the reader is not sure who the people in the ‘us’ pronoun is; it could be the poet and her boyfriend or girlfriend.
Another moment in which connotative words are used to create ambiguity in the meaning is in the lines, “of the desire to show you to everyone I love, /to move openly together…” In this line, we see the poet’s desire to be together with her beloved, whom we are not sure about the identity, but she says that she cannot. The reason behind this is unclear; is she not able to be with her beloved because they are lesbians and therefore judged by society and banned by law, or because she is a woman and not allowed to express her feeling since the patriarchal societal norms do not approve. The ambiguity once again shows the bitterness of the poet, who is resenting the undefined status that she is in. She cannot reveal who her beloved is, nor can she live her true feelings openly the way she wants to.
The poet uses similes and metaphors as figures of speech to highlight her feelings and bitterness. In the first section, the poet says, “… We want to live like trees…” While the poet seems to express her longing for nature and simplicity in her life, she is also comparing herself and her beloved to trees. In this comparison, the poet seems to say that she wished to be free, reliable and firmly rooted to where she belongs, just like trees are rooted permanently on earth. The poet also seems to suggest that she longs for a routine life in which the cycle of daily life continues. Unlike other modernists, Rich here appears to be longing for the everyday life of the modernist era, which is possibly the first hint that she was a lesbian, although it is still unclear. It is possible that; since she was a lesbian, and since the societal norms condemned transgenderism, she had a fragmented and varied life that had its ups and downs. She could not live her feelings and desire openly, which is possible that made her bitter. She reflects this feeling of loss of solidarity in her life and resentment through the simile of the tree.
Rich uses metaphors in the poem as a poetry device. In the first section, Rich says, “our animal passion rooted in the city.”, In which she associates the feeling of passion attributed to humans with animals. In its literal meaning, the poet seems to be referring to the excessive lust that she sometimes feels; in its figurative sense, she seems to be referring to the feeling of being abandoned. Animal, by nature, is creatures that desert not just the species that is different from itself, but also its kind when it faces potential danger or condemnation. In this sense, the poet-persona seems to be saying that individuals who think and feel differently than the general public are condemned and isolated by the society.
The poet persona also seems to suggest that unrootedness of feelings. She seems to say that the problem with desires and emotions is that they stem from the city and the events happening. This makes emotions and desires temporary, changeable and material; much like the city itself, that is socially materialistic and politically changing fast. The materiality of the city makes it unreliable and therefore temporary, there is no sincerity to express feelings of desire, love, passion; instead, the poet reveals her resentment and bitterness through the materialistic society. In a sense, the poet is not sure if the relationship that she starts will have a future since the community itself is pretentious and materialistic. It is because of this insincerity and untrustworthy society that the poet feels bitter. She is unable to love a genuine life, not because she does not want to, but because she cannot survive with positive feelings in the materialist society. The poem, in its entirety, portrays the relationship between the speaker and her lover. The connection is complicated and unorthodox to move on, because of the city and its social norms. In a more precise background reading, Rich wrote these poems for her lesbian lover, and therefore her lines seem to be critical and commentary on the societal norms that prevent them from living their relationship openly. The relationship that they want to have is a hard one, not because of them, but because of the general public. Her choice of words, structuring, the phrasing of feelings and thoughts together form the poetical devices that help to emphasize the hardships of their relationship, but also the bitterness that she feels because of not being allowed to express her feelings openly.