Analysis Of Unrequited Love

Stories of unrequited love and failed romance constantly surround us, in short stories, novels and poems alike. Poetry by Kate Llewellyn and Unrequited Love in 9 Parts by Sabrina Benaim both explore this concept of unrequited, hopeless love in their diverse poetry styles. The poets each describe the effects of unrequited love on their lives and feelings, from different perspectives. As a middle-aged, Australian woman at the time of writing Poetry, Kate Llewellyn suffered from a divorce with her husband – she never remarried. This was the basis of her story of unrequited love. Contrastingly, Sabrina Benaim is a young, Canadian poet based in Toronto, who specialises in slam poetry. Unrequited Love in 9 Parts was published in 2017, so is a more

Llewellyn’s opening question “What’s the use of words?” conveys her hopelessness in life, because of heartbreak. Her passion for writing and the importance of words, is affected as she reflects “either you die of love or not”. Benaim uses enjambment heavily in Unrequited Love in 9 Parts; which is clear through her lack of punctuation and the careless, impulsive writing style - she has a lot to say in a short space of time. An example of simile by Llewellyn is “the world slips off like silk”. Llewellyn uses the material of silk as a means of giving her readers something they are familiar with, to compare to something impossible, i.e. the world “slipping off”. Meanwhile, Benaim uses the simile of “still loud as a snail’s cry”, which is also clever irony, as the cry of a snail would be silent to humans, thus she is actually saying how quiet the space is. Benaim also utilises assonance in her poem, which can be seen in words such as “trembling” and “remembering”, and “slipped” and “grip”. Llewellyn uses the technique of repetition in the words “words” and “life”, which both connect to the title of Poetry. Benaim also uses repetition, to convey her feeling of frustration in the lines, “wouldn 't I know about crawling up inside oneself, wouldn 't I know about a body full of