The Language of “Twenty One Love Poems: VII”

“am I simply using us, like a river or a war?

And how have I used rivers, how have I used wars

to escape writing of the worst thing of all-

not the crimes of others, not even our own death,

but the failure to want our freedom passionately enough.”

What I loved initially about this poem was the way Rich addresses a quintessential truth of being a writer: that we use our love and lovers as metaphor and simile and in doing so, we strip away part of the emotion, the connection. We use them as tools to advance ourselves. The use of the comparison to a river and the war as examples is worth noting. Not only does it further a theme that Rich uses throughout the poem of water and violence, but it brings the reader’s attention to the fact that both a river and war can yield similar results. They can both create and take away. By comparing her love as a metaphor similar to them, Rich almost seems to say look, we are both beautiful and destructive. Our love can create and it can take away.

As the poem progresses, Rich worries that she is using these images of love, rivers and war not as an inadequate or inappropriate turn of phrase, but as a way to avoid what she’s really worried about: “the failure to want out freedom passionately enough” (147). Throughout all her works, Rich focuses on the idea of the suffering and survival of women. In this poem, she’s saying that  our love  does not free us, as we are so often lead to believe, but instead distracts us and keeps us from addressing how passionately we want our freedom.