'Postcard to His Wife' by Dannie Abse annotations

 

 

 

This poem is very personal to Abse’s loss of his wife, the structure, the exclamation marks and the emotions shown make it really realistic, like he is literally calling out for his wife, begging her to come back. I think the way he has described his love for his wife and the whole poem is beautiful.

Abse is writing from his own experience, whereas Larkin seems to write as an observer of other people’s lives. However Larkin has explored the themes of love and relationships in some of his poems such as in Love Songs in Age, Talking in Bed and Wild Oats. Also in this poem a huge theme is loss, this is also a theme in Larkin's poems such as in Home Is So Sad.