Yrsa Daley Ward as a poet
Yrsa Daley Ward was born on 11 February 1989, Chorley, United Kingdom. She is a writer, model and actor. Her memoir, ” The Terrible” was published in 2018 and bagged PEN / Ackerley prize in 2019. She has also contributed to “Black is King” as a cowriter from Beyonce’s musical film which also serves as a visual companion to the 2019 album “The Lion King: The Gift”. Her other works are “Bone”, “On Snakes and Other Stories”.
She is well known for Spoken word poetry, and is an “Instagram poet”. She says that “People are afraid to tell the truth, But I don’t care. It’s boring otherwise.” She has lot to speak on sexuality, relationships and mental health. She is self confessed fire starter and has a colorful past. Her views on poetry are ” Old poetry can be so inaccessible. Not just for people of color but for people who aren’t super erudite, who don’t read, don’t love Shakespeare. Some people just want to connect with feelings…”
Poem What Love Isn’t
It is not a five star stay. It is not
compliments and it is never ever
flattery.
It is solid. Not sweet but always
nutritious
always herb, always salt. Sometimes
grit.
It is now and till the end. It is never a slither, never a little
it is a full serving
it is much
too much and real
never pretty or clean. It stinks. You can
smell it coming
it is weight
it is weight and it is too heavy to feel
good sometimes. It is discomfort. It is
not what the films say. Only songs
get it right
it is regular
it is difficult
and always , always
surprising.
Line by line Meaning
It is not a five star stay. It is not
compliments and it is never ever
flattery.
The opening lines of the poem describes what is not love. The poet says that it is not a five star stay referring to the luxuries of life. It is not appreciation of being together, not the compliments. Love is genuinely not a flattery or fancy. She uses the phrase never ever in the lines, where poet is definitely sure that it is not flattery.
It is solid. Not sweet but always
nutritious
always herb, always salt. Sometimes
grit.
Love is solid according to poet. It is stable and reliable. Yet it is not sweet, love is amalgam of feelings in which one encounters happiness, sad, jealousy, sacrifice and so on. Thus it is not always sweet as sugar but has hurdles and ups and downs in a relationship. But it is always nutritious. Here nutritious can mean healthy, balanced and beneficial. Love helps heal pain and keeps one mentally healthy. A person in love is better than an isolated one.
Poet believes that it is as good as herb, meaning a medicinal cure to problems in life. Love has the capacity to blind or hide the troubles and sufferings. It is salt. Salt is inevitable in food. Certain amount of salt is also essential and necessary for humans. So love is as important as salt. Another feature of salt is, food becomes tasty only when right amount of salt is added. Even if it’s more or less, it spoils the taste. Similar is love to life. Only the required amount of love can make life beautiful. Grit refers to firmness of love. The word always assert the expression of eternity.
It is now and till the end. It is never a slither, never a little
it is a full serving
it is much
too much and real
never pretty or clean. It stinks. You can
smell it coming
Mankind can never remain uninfluenced by the power of love. It always stays in our lives as a shadow guiding life. It is permanent and is ambiguous. Love is full serving refers to all the experiences that love delivers which is too much for a human being.
Meanwhile it is also real and not pretty or clean. Both not pretty and clean are presenting common meaning that is love is not elegant. The journey of love serves with harsh realities of life, also the magic and wonders of life that makes life beautiful. The mixture of both ups and downs in love makes it unclean and not pretty to her. She says it stinks, here stinks can exemplify the dark side of love such as distrust, fights, misunderstandings and so on. One can realize the negative emotions evoking in love.
it is weight
it is weight and it is too heavy to feel
good sometimes. It is discomfort. it is
not what the films say. Only songs
get it right
it is regular
it is difficult
and always , always
surprising.
At the end of the poem that love is heavy and it is not easy to remain good sometimes. As mentioned earlier in the poem, love is a balanced combination of varieties of emotion. It also brings discomfort which is one of its feature. And it is not imaginary just like films but true as songs that touches heart. Poet gives other descriptions to love as regular, difficult and always surprising. The word Surprising is interesting in the poem because it defines the nature of love as an unique experience. No body can predict the path that love chooses to travel.
Poem Analysis
This poem of Yrsa Daley Ward is an expression of what love is not and what love is in actual. The feeling of love is always unique and different to each other but it seems similar when it is described. The theme of the poem deals with significance of love, it’s role in life and it’s versatile nature. It clearly distinguishes the positive and negative shades of love. The poem also seems as an insight to the reality and is close to real life experiences. It is also similar to poem Is/Not by Margaret Atwood. The tone of the poem is pragmatic and peaceful. Poet takes a practical approach in explaining love.
Observations in the poem:
The poet is trying put forth her views on love and thus Not is used four times to portray what is not love. Each lines are dedicated to theme love and we cannot find reference to other subject. Most of the lines start from the word It referring to the term love. Certain words like always, never, sometimes, much are repeated often in the poem. There is irregular rhyme scheme and sentences are incomplete.
