TO THE MAN I MARRIED

by Angela Manalang Gloria

I cannot love you with a love

                                  That outcompares the boundless sea,

            For that were false, as no such love

                        And no such ocean can ever be

 But I can love you with a love

                      As infinite as the wave that dies

           And dying, holds from crest to crest

                 The blue of everlasting skies

        ANALYSIS (STANZA):

                   

        1ST STANZA

The first stanza means, the girl can't love her husband as great and as wide as the ocean, and to infinite, because for her, there's no such love is like that. But it doesn't mean that the girl doesn't truly love her husband.

        2ND STANZA

The second stanza means, the girl can love her husband, as infinite as the waves of the ocean, for as long as there is an ocean, its wave will never be away from it, and even if they die, her love for her husband will never fade.

       RHYME SCHEME:
         I cannot love you with a love                          -A

        That outcompares the boundless sea,         -B

        For that were false, as no such love              -A

        And no such ocean can ever be                    -B

       But I can love you with a love                          -C

       As infinite as the wave that dies                      -D

       And dying, holds from crest to crest               -E

      The blue of everlasting skies                           -D

       FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE:

                         In the 2nd stanza, in the 2nd line:

                                                     

  As infinite as the wave that dies

-SIMILE, because, the girl is comparing her love for her husband, to the wave of an ocean.

        IMAGERY: ETERNAL LOVE

        SYMBOLISM: MARRIAGE

        SUMMARY:
               

                     About a girl who's married to a man, that she can't love as wide as the ocean, but her love is like a wave, that cannot be separated to the ocean, and that ocean is her husband. It seems like, her husband is her everything, that she couldn't live without her husband.

        ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

ANGELA MANALANG GLORIA

Angela Manalang Gloria’s Poems (1940) is the first and only pre-war anthology of poetry in English by a Filipino woman. A collection of lyrical pieces exploring a woman’s private passions, it was predictably ignored at the 1940 Commonwealth Literary Contests, which prized social significance and moral values. Although re-issued as a student anthology in 1950, Poems failed to merit the attention of the dominant literary critics of the time, who subscribed to the school of New Criticism.

Manalang Gloria’s poetry, however, has undergone revaluation in recent years. The publication of a complete collection of her poems and a literary biography has made her work available to a wider audience. Re-reading her work free from the constraints of her time, feminist critics such as Edna Zapanta Manlapaz and poet Gemino Abad have found the poems of Manalang Gloria a revelation, prompting them to assert that she emerges—imperiously—as the matriarch of Filipino poets writing in English.

Among ALIWW’s collection of Manalang Gloria’s personal papers and photographs are two notebooks, Bureau of Education issues which the poet had appropriated from her young son in grade school. These contain early penciled drafts of some of Manalang Gloria’s poems and various notes, some of which have faded beyond legibility. Of particular interest is an early draft of “Revolt from Hymen,” the controversial piece which reportedly made the all-male judges at the Commonwealth Literary Contests “see red.” The draft seethes with anger at the experience of marital rape, and becomes a compelling read against the final version of the poem, where the poet successfully transmutes the raw display of rage into controlled but masterful spite.