Friday, 7 March 2014

Reference Back



This poem links to Love Song in Age as its using music in order to trigger a memory

nostalgia - looking back on better times

"unsatisfactory" -> disappointing - repetition of formula

"played record after record" -> wasting time - depressing - showing that they would rather remember than have no memory of it at all

"unsatisfactory prime" -> oxymoron - the best part of his life was 'unsatisfactory'

"a huge remembering pre-electric horn" -> he's playing the records on a gramophone (old way - wants it to be raw - like the reality of the memory)

"The flock od notes those antique Negroes blew" -> jazz music - going back to a key point in his past where that kind of music must have been important to him

"lives" on on line and "losses" on the next -> presents juxtapostion between his life then and how it was then

Happy memories reminds him of how his life is now -> his past is taunting him - he obsesses over his regrets - and thinks about how different his life is now than it was in the past

Better to have a short memory because then you wouldn't have to remember how happy you were then as apposed to now -> brings to mind the saying 'better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all'





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