Love and Loneliness

In the three works, “Love Medicine” by Louise Erdrich, “This is just to say” by William Carlos Williams and “l(a” by e.e. cummings all share the power of relationship. It is clear in Williams’ poem that the speaker has a relationship with the person whose plums he ate. Erdrich’s story is a powerful one of love, a love between two adults that seems to be falling apart and a love of a grandchild for his grandparents. cummings poem on the other hand is one of a lack of relationships, thus leaving the speaker alone, with no one.
The speaker in William’s poem is very straightforward, telling exactly what he did as if it were a note to someone. But most interestingly in the final stanza, he asks the person to forgive him showing that he values the feelings and the relationship that they have and did not want to anger her. His apology is the expression of the importance of having a relationship and preserving it.
Preservation of relationships is present in Erdrich’s “Love Medicine”. We see Lipsha trying desperately to preserve the love between his grandparents by concocting his own version of the tribes Love Medicine. He feeds both his grandmother and grandfather a turkey heart to bring their hearts back together and renew their love for one another. But Lipsha’s grandmother was left alone very often because her husbands mind was failing. According to Lipsha, “...mostly our problem was not so much that he was not all there, but that what was there of him often hankered after Lamartine” (pg 228), showing that although his mind was present he was thinking of other women, leaving his wife a lone and longing for his love.
We see this loneliness in cummings poem “l(a” This poem does not have much of a story because it cannot be read out loud, but the story is in it’s structure and it’s form. The theme of this poem is loneliness and being one and alone as one can see in the lines because “one” (line 7) is on a line all it’s one; it is also the only full word in the poem. The form also shows how “one” is the center of loneliness. The rest of the poem is also an image of a leaf falling to the ground; you get this through the letters separated down the page. cummings shows the loneliness of life without the presence of another person, without the presence of relationships.