Strawberries: Poetry and Essay Christopher Callaghan

Strawberries Critical Essay Christopher Callaghan 12th September 2012 Strawberries by Edwin Morgan is a loving poem, which explores the wonders of human emotions such as love, desire and fear. The poets purpose in writing this piece was to educate the reader and to evoke emotions with poetic techniques. Morgan uses some extremely effective metaphors in this poem to decipher his relationship with his partner We dipped them in sugar, looking at individually other. The sugar signifies that there is something artificial about the relationship, that it needs sweetened. Looking at each other signifies how confident and at ease they are around each other. This lets the reader know that this is a real relationship which has matured through time. The poet similarly uses sentence organise to show how memories fade through time, the further the reader goes through the poem, the shorter each stanza gets. This shows that the poet wanted to write the memory down before he forgot it. The wri ter also uses very clever word choice to enhance the readers understanding of the situation With the two forks crossed. This hints to the reader that the poem is in fact about two men.Morgan couldnt obviously point this out as at the time it was written, homosexuality was illegal. This lets the reader know difficult it must have been for someone not being allowed to express their love without the fear of persecution. I think that it is wrong to force someone to hide their love, no subject what form. In conclusion, Strawberries is a loving, thought provoking poem which shows that there is nothing sinful about love. Morgan uses effective poetry techniques such as sentence structure and metaphors to show that any form of love is still love.