Communication I
Communication I - meaning Summary
Desire Met with Indifference
The poem contrasts a woman’s sensual longing with a man’s intellectual detachment. While she enacts intimacy by the sea, imagining closeness, he responds with distant cultural references and abstractions. Her physical gestures and expectations are met by conversation that avoids emotional commitment, and she ultimately reports to her mother that he loves someone else. The poem emphasizes the gap between embodied desire and evasive speech, ending in quiet disappointment.
Read Complete AnalysesShe wished of him a lover's kiss and nights of coupled twining. They laced themselves between the trees and to the water's edge. Reminding her the cratered moon lay light-years away, he spoke of Greece, the Parthenon and Cleopatra's barge. She splayed her foot up to the shin within the ocean brine. He quoted Pope and Bernard Shaw and Catcher in the Rye. Her sandal lost, she dried her toe and then she mopped her brow. Dry-eyed she walked into her room and frankly told her mother, “Of all he said, I understood he said he loved another.”
Feel free to be first to leave comment.