How Do I Wanna Be Yours and Stop All the Clocks Compare?
I Wanna Be Yours and Stop All The Clocks
I Wanna Be Yours and Stop All The Clocks are both complex love poems. John Cooper Clarke’s humorous I Wanna Be Yours was written post 1945 (sometime in the 1970’s), whereas W.H. Auden’s moving tale of his brother-in-law was composed pre 1945, in the mid-1930’s. They are unusual romance poems because they both avoid use of clichéd styles of passion. There are no everlasting red roses or intimate images. Instead, the eternal heart is replaced by a dusty old vacuum cleaner and that promise of ‘always’ is substituted by black cotton gloves.
I Wanna Be Yours seems like a simple but somewhat forgettable love poem before reading the last two lines. The duration of the poem shows Clarke using everyday objects to represent that he will be there for her throughout good times and bad. She can rely on him and he will always be there for her. However, by incorporating these objects, such as a coffee pot, into the poem, Cooper Clarke is also implying that he will be there always, not just when times are swaying one way or the other, but for the times in between to.
At the beginning of the poem, Cooper Clarke says: ‘I wanna be your vacuum cleaner, breathing in your dust’. This implies that he doesn’t just love her good points; he loves the bad things about her too. He says that he wants to be her ‘Ford Cortina’, which was an expensive, much-loved car in the ‘70’s. Cooper Clarke exclaims that he ‘will never rust’. By this, he is suggesting that he will never have get bored or have an affair because she means the world to him and that will never change.
In the next couplet, he is flirting with the woman. This suggests that he expects the woman to read and personally acknowledge that the poem is about her. Following that couplet, he says ‘You call the shots’. This means that she is in charge; he will do whatever she wants. If she sincerely asked him to jump off a cliff, or kill another person, he would because it is her will.
When
I Wanna Be Yours and Stop All The Clocks are both complex love poems. John Cooper Clarke’s humorous I Wanna Be Yours was written post 1945 (sometime in the 1970’s), whereas W.H. Auden’s moving tale of his brother-in-law was composed pre 1945, in the mid-1930’s. They are unusual romance poems because they both avoid use of clichéd styles of passion. There are no everlasting red roses or intimate images. Instead, the eternal heart is replaced by a dusty old vacuum cleaner and that promise of ‘always’ is substituted by black cotton gloves.
I Wanna Be Yours seems like a simple but somewhat forgettable love poem before reading the last two lines. The duration of the poem shows Clarke using everyday objects to represent that he will be there for her throughout good times and bad. She can rely on him and he will always be there for her. However, by incorporating these objects, such as a coffee pot, into the poem, Cooper Clarke is also implying that he will be there always, not just when times are swaying one way or the other, but for the times in between to.
At the beginning of the poem, Cooper Clarke says: ‘I wanna be your vacuum cleaner, breathing in your dust’. This implies that he doesn’t just love her good points; he loves the bad things about her too. He says that he wants to be her ‘Ford Cortina’, which was an expensive, much-loved car in the ‘70’s. Cooper Clarke exclaims that he ‘will never rust’. By this, he is suggesting that he will never have get bored or have an affair because she means the world to him and that will never change.
In the next couplet, he is flirting with the woman. This suggests that he expects the woman to read and personally acknowledge that the poem is about her. Following that couplet, he says ‘You call the shots’. This means that she is in charge; he will do whatever she wants. If she sincerely asked him to jump off a cliff, or kill another person, he would because it is her will.
When