BBL 3217 POETRY AND DRAMA IN ENGLISH

BA ENGLISH (EXEC) TRI-SEM 8/2010

Question 2 : From your opinion, when is the most suitable time to use/read poetry? When
you are sad or happy? Or any time that you feel suitable? Explain your answer. Your
answer should include references from poems that we have covered in class. You should
indicate whether this poem is suitable to be read while you are sad/happy/any mood at all.

This paper is intended to discuss on when is the most suitable time to use/read poetry.

Whether when are happy, sad, depressed, disappointed, or even angry. From my point of view,

poetry is something that is written as a reflection of a person’s feelings at certain time or place.

So, poetry clearly has huge similarities with our feeling or mood in everyday basis. Poetry suits

for all kind of mood as it is created to cater different people’s thoughts. As an example, when

anyone in love, the first poem that could explain their love to their soul mate will be William

Shakespeare’s sonnet 18. It is perhaps the best knows and most well loved of all 154 sonnets of

William Shakespeare. When we are alone and thinking about out loved one, sonnet 18 would

probably be the perfect poem to read. Poet of sonnet 18 starts the praise of his dear friend

without pretention as later in he builds the image of a perfect being. The seasons that have been

used in this sonnet portrayed an impressive description of our loved one. This sonnet display that

our loved one is the most beautiful of all in this world. Sure this is the thought a love couple

towards each other. We would definitely want to ensure that our loved one is forever in memory

and saved from the oblivion that accompanies death. Sonnet 18 is a way to preserve our love and

is the best poem if we are in love. It also will work as wonderful and romantic love letter.

If we are dealing with a feeling of separation from our love one or loneliness without

them, sonnet 97 will be the best poem to convey our feelings and thoughts in it. What a person

who is in love would think as the beloved is away? The anticipation to meet her again and if can

Prepared by:
Sudheep Ramasamy (B10127)
 BBL 3217 POETRY AND DRAMA IN ENGLISH
BA ENGLISH (EXEC) TRI-SEM 8/2010

patch things up. The comparison of beloved absence to the desolation of winter is the main

reason this poem suits the feeling of separation from the loved one. At some point we might feel

as we are in different world because of the separation. This is what the poet portrayed as in the

second quatrain of the sonnet. Wherever we go, whatever we heard doesn’t seem to be all good

and correct and the fear that winter is upon us. The use of metaphor of time is the plus point

towards sonnet 97. The seasons, so often invoked as a metaphor for the passage of time in the

sonnets and function as a kind if delusional indication of how deeply a person misses the

company of the beloved. Sonnet 97 is the best to read when we don’t feel happy, gloomy and in

desperation of love due to the separation.

Sonnet 60 is the best poem to read when we are resting aside and thinking of the

nature of time as it passes and how well it acts on beloved life and us. The concept of waves on

the ocean that move forward to the shore and quickly replaced with another shows that time

doesn’t wait for us and we can’t go back in time either. This poem is to create the thought of

preserving what is ours to be everlasting. In this case, our beloved beauty. The comparison of

human life in time to the sun as at birth (Navity), ocean as the main of light then crawls upward

toward noon, that suggest maturity and suddenly undone by crooked eclipses, which fight against

and confound the sun’s glory. Sonnet 60 also explains that even though aging is going on, you

(beloved) beauty will stay forever despite the cruel hand of time. This poem will make us realize

of what we are having now and teach us to appreciate it forever.

Above all, sonnet 1 by William Shakespeare is the most influenced poem towards anyone

who is in the age range of middle or late of 20’s. This poem would be great as a advice to a

young man who is so obsessed with the world globalization. This poem introduce many of the

themes that will define the sequence of beauty, the passage of human life in time, the ideas of

Prepared by:
Sudheep Ramasamy (B10127)
 BBL 3217 POETRY AND DRAMA IN ENGLISH
BA ENGLISH (EXEC) TRI-SEM 8/2010

virtue and wasteful self-consumption and the love the speaker bears for the young man. Young

man are advised not to waste their youth and use it wisely. This sonnet urges a young man to

bear children as an act of defiance against time. The moral premise of this poem is that we

shouldn’t waste our youth by keeping it to ourselves alone. The world portrayed to be pity on us

as we didn’t bear any children to keep our legacy and beauty to the next world and losing a

father to a child. The poet clearly states that a young man may now be beautiful but that, in time,

his beauty will fade and he will bury his content within him and not pass his beauty on. So

whoever confused on what to do with their life should read this sonnet and get the message out

of it. “Don’t wait too long until you are old and withered”. If we don’t know what to do with our

life after much achievement, get married and have children and the pride continues.

A poem act as a shoulder to cry when we are sad and gives us directions when we are lost

in our life and even become guide to live a life.

Prepared by:
Sudheep Ramasamy (B10127)
BBL 3217 POETRY AND DRAMA IN ENGLISH
BA ENGLISH (EXEC) TRI-SEM 8/2010

Prepared by:
Sudheep Ramasamy (B10127)