Can I change your mind?

The poetry of persuasion

I seem to remember writing somewhere - quite possibly in the opening chapter of my book - that persuasive writing and true creative writing have nothing in common. But it occurs to me that one of the best known poems in the English language has a very persuasive look about it.

So how do I get out of that, then? Not easily. But I think I can just about extricate myself from this apparent self-contradiction. Because I don't believe that Andrew Marvell really wrote To His Coy Mistress with the aim of getting his girlfriend to go all the way, as I believe they used to say in the 17th century. In fact, I don't believe that he necessarily even had a girlfriend at the time. I think he was writing the poem to capture in words something he felt about the fleeting nature of human longings and pleasures in the face of mortality. His main motive, in other words, was not to influence another person, but to express himself.

Anyway, I think it's worth taking the risk of undermining my own argument if it gives me a pretext for including this gorgeous-but-in-my-view-not-truly-persuasive piece of writing:


From To His Coy Mistress, by Andrew Marvell

Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapt power.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

posted by Lindsay @ 8:31 AM