Couplings By Menna Elfyn Analysis

Couplings – Menna Elfyn

Couplings by Menna Elfyn is a poem about love, life and relationships: mainly about a couple starting their life together, written in the form of couplets. The poem uses provocative vocabulary, meant to jar you out of a peaceful mindset – ‘ruins’, ‘knock’, ‘skyless’… It perpetuates the idea that the house, which is a metaphor for the couple, isn’t perfect – it’s ‘crooked’, ‘creaking’. The fact that the lines don’t rhyme but they still get the message across could be to imply that the couple is imperfect but they still work well together.

In the first line, Elfyn states that the life is like a house that is broken and that the couple which she writes about plans to fix it. She uses assonance to create a rhythm in ‘house’

It could be a metaphor for the imperfection in humans and that you have to love someone despite their flaws. The author uses consonance and alliteration with the ‘t’ sound – ‘two’, ‘They’, ‘together’ and ‘fitted’, but there is also assonance of the ‘e’ sound in ‘crooked’, ‘segments’, ‘They’, ‘fitted’ and ‘together’.

In line six, Elfyn compares the couple to wood with ‘timbers’ and how well they are suited for each other how one-minded, and how harmonious they are with ‘in concord.’ ‘Smooth beams and wide.’ could mean that besides the fact that life is a bit of a mess, everything is going well for them, and they have options and directions to branch out in. She uses bi-syllabic nouns in the first part of the line and mono-syllabic words in the latter.

In line seven, she starts off a new stanza, with another three-word sentence. ‘Two in touch.’ could also be read out as ‘too in touch’, as if the couple knows what the other is going to do or say before they do it; they are in synch. In the second part of the line, the author could mean that being so in touch with each other is the point to reach in a relationship. She uses alliteration with ‘two’, ‘touch’, ‘that’s’ and ‘the’, as well as consonance of the same ‘t’ sound in ‘craft’ and

‘Stock still for a time’ could mean that it felt like time had stopped while they were together, or maybe that it had been so unpleasant to be in that house that it felt like time had stopped. Elfyn uses words with an ‘o’ in them to signify how hollow the wood was.

In the penultimate line, the author could be describing the wind by ‘clear’, as it made the house creak at times, but they still loved it, faults and all. Or it could be how simple and easy-to-understand their love was to them, just how well the two sides of the roof fit together, like pieces of a puzzle. There is also alliteration in ‘clear’, ‘cut’ and ‘creaking’. The amount of C’s in the line makes it feel like the c-shape is encasing the couple, like a hug, as if they are trying to protect each other.

In the last line the worm symbolises death and the end to their love, but since it’s a continuation of the previous line, their love is what holds them together, and what keeps their relationship strong through thick and