An analysis of the poetry of John Cornford "To Margot Heinemann"

John Cornford was an English poet committed Communist who fought in the Spanish civil war. His poem "With Margot Heinemann" relates to his lover, also a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain. This paper presents an analysis of the poem.

Only the title of the Cornford gives us an impression as to the nature of his poem, and after only one reading, we gather it as a love poem. This is the first person, giving the impression (possibly false) the poet himself, John Cornford, is the protagonist.

However there is an ambiguity in which the poem is actually addressing, evident in the first verse. The words: heart of world heart is a fragment of a quote by Karl Marx as religion. In the original quotation, Marx described religion as "opium of the people", calling him "the heart of a world without heart." Cornford seem, therefore, to deal with religion itself, a strong view in the second line with the repetition of the word "heart". However, because he was a Communist devoted, these religious sentiments seems unlikely. Another reading could assume Cornford honours its small friend – the Heinemann namesake Margot - with the kind of worship religious believer may consider their chosen faith.

Although the content of this poem is undeniable lyrical, awareness of the parameter becomes evident in the second and third strophes. Thanks to the line "the wind rises in the evening", we collect a sense of the moment of the day, then a sense of the time of the year with the next line "Reminds that autumn is near." A specific location is indicated in line with the opening of the next verse on last-mile in Huesca' which places the poem on an end Aragon, Spain summer day.

Further details are conspicuously omitted, for example the reader learns on the topic of the poem, Margot Heinemann, itself. However they learn something of the Narrator, collect us is anxious, indicated in the lines "I fear of losing you" and "I'm afraid my fear" in the second verse. It is interesting to note that, even if it is considered a war poem, nowhere does state Narrator is imminent conflict with fear.

In formal terms, "Margot Heinemann" is a decidedly traditional poem. Cornford compresses the story in a fairly rigorous shape, with approximately equal length lines and a discernible rhymes, where the last word of the second and fourth lines of each stanza rhymes, such as "you" and "view" and "near" and "fear" regime in sections 1 and 2, respectively. However the final stanza ends with a half, rhyme with "Tomb" only partially rhymes with "love". The effect of this is to create emphasis on the last line in attracting the attention of the reader: "don't forget my love". Rigorous structure of the poem is used to intensify its sincerity of tone.

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