Bruce Lundgren explores a number of relationships in his poetry; focusing on the connections he has with the people around him. His poems “Love strings” and “My father’s dahlias” contrast a loving and healthy relationship between a couple with a father-son relationship that is filled with pain and sadness. Lundgren makes use of a variety of language techniques to convey two very different perspectives on relationships.
The poem Love Strings explores a positive relationship between a young couple and the effect it has on the individuals involved. The main theme of Love Strings is that of love; the type that is capable of benefiting and uplifting both sides of the relationship. The poem is in sonnet form containing 14 lines and rhyming couplets in the rhyme scheme of aabb. The rhyme scheme creates a celebratory mood and allows the poem to flow; making the audience feel somewhat happy for the persona in the…show more content… The poem conveys the negative aspects of the poet’s relationship with his father informing the reader about the sadness he has experienced. The title of the poem “My father’s dahlias” automatically informs us that the poem is about the persona’s father while the line in the first stanza “Dahlias remind me of my father” indicates that the dahlias are symbolic of the father. Lundgren describes the dahlias using words with negative connotations in the line “their spiked and rigid head” to convey his strained relationship with his father. The descriptive words “spiked” and “rigid” refer to the father’s attitude and cold character; communicating the persona’s negative feelings towards his father. The first stanza goes on to personify the dahlias as being cold and unwelcoming; like the father. Overall, the first stanza expresses Lundgren’s animosity towards the dahlias as they remind him of his father and thus conveys their unhealthy