letters from yorkshire

• quote one :

  '' it's not romance, simply how things are ''
• quote 2 :

  '' Is your life more because you dig and sow ''
• quote 3 :

  '' our souls tap out messages across icy miles ''
• 'its not romance, simply how things are'

  • romance- not iddealistic/ fantasy
  • speaker does not want to romantacise their lives, its just reality
• 'is your life more because you dig and sow'

  • rhetorical question
  • located at the centre of the poem, the main theme/ question
• 'our souls tap out messages across icy miles'

  • icy- adjective, the distance is difficult/ negative
  • souls- meaningfull connection
  • they still communicate despite the difference
• structure

  • no rhyme scheme- simple and feels natural
  • tercets - 3 line stanzas, odd number - no balance so feels disjointed/ disconnected
• context :

  • modern life and relationships are often centered around screens and technology
  • pressures to stay connected using the internet
  • letters are seen by modern readers as old fashioned and romantic
  • Dooley's poem is semi-autobiographical because it is reflecting her receiving letters from a friend in Yorkshire whilst she works in London and at least partially depicts the disparity between her urban life and his rural life as a farmer
• summary

  possibly an autobiographical poem about a speaker who, far from her home, is in a city where she works for a news company. The speaker describes a person close to her, a man who works on a farm in Yorkshire, writing a letter to her, the poem emphasises the drastic differences between their urban and rural lives
• EASILY COMPARED TO

  MOTHER ANY DISTANCE- both speakers talk about people close to them with a sense of fondness, both make use of enjambment. in m.a.d it is clearly about his mother, we are unsure of the relationship between the speaker and the man she talks of in Dooley's poem.

  WINTER SWANS- both speakers portray a sense of insecurity, both poems lack a rhyme scheme, both poems invoke a melancholy feeling in the reader that ultimately stems from the conflict depicted in the poems. however in w.s there appears to be a resolution in the conflict however in l.f.y the speaker is still giving the impression she is insecure in her relationship, w.s has a final line stanza that gives the poem a sense of finality that l.f.y lacks