Advice To A Discarded Lover Fleur Adcock

New Zealand author Fleur Adcock’s Advice to a Discarded Lover is a poem that explores the bitter, revolting aftermath of what once was a relationship. As the title indicates, the narrator is speaking to a “discarded lover” of their negative feelings in regards to their past and what the lover should do. Throughout the poem, Adcock makes use of literary devices such as metaphor, imagery, personification and rhetorical question in a way that leaves the readers shocked by the end of reading it.

Throughout the poem, Adcock demonstrates the stages of decay of a bird or in other words, the development of heartbreak the speaker experiences by each stanza. In the first line, “Think, now” the narrator puts on an authoritative tone, which commands and immediately captures the reader’s attention. The use of intrusive language continues on through the first stanza, in the form of short, clipped phrases when describing the bird full of maggots. Maggots are often linked with death and decay, which can be interpreted that their relationship had just ended. Adcock then raises a …show more content…
This was to suggest the feeling the narrator experienced after they had first broken up. However, this was then immediately replaced by revulsion. The use of the dead bird was a big metaphor, or analogy that played throughout the poem to describe describe their past love affair. This was accompanied with the use of figurative imagery, which was evident in stanza two, line 3: when decay comes, with the creeping stench / and the wriggling, munching scavengers. I found the verbs she used such as “Creeping”, “wriggling” and “munching” quite interesting as they are words usually used in describing someone’s reaction towards insects. By using these negative connotations, it demonstrates to the readers of the narrator’s revulsion towards her ex-lover and the carcass of their foregone