Love as Depicted in Ninety Days: A Memoir of Recovery - Essay Example

‘Ninety days is a memoir by Bill Clegg. It focuses on Clegg’s road towards recovery from cocaine and alcohol at the age of thirty-four. Clegg decides to enter an inpatient facility to help him reclaim his career, apartment, his dear cat and a boyfriend to love. His road to recovery is full of pain with little glory. The theme of love in the memoir gets portrayed through the support that Clegg receives from the circle of those trying to recover from addiction (Clegg 22). Clegg remembers friends who supported him and saved his life as they tried to relate to him. It is through their encouragement that he never gave up. He explains the friendships he made while on his road to recovery as incomparable to others he had. The friendship he creates is on another level as he gets to share experiences that other people would not understand. Clegg also tells of his story of sobriety so he can get loved by the old and new family he finds (Clegg 48).

‘This is our youth’ is a play by Kenneth Lonergan. The play centers on two friends, Warren and Dennis. Both are college dropouts. Warren shows up at Dennis’s apartment after having stolen fifteen thousand dollars from his dad. Warren gets introduced to the complexities of human relationships about loyalty and betrayal by Dennis and his female companion, Jessica. The play portrays young love by the characters. The theme of love gets depicted by the relationship between Warren and Dennis. Warren hopelessly hero-worships Dennis and follows him through the life of the party. Warren hooks up with Jessica while Dennis gets along with Valerie, his girlfriend. The love between the characters is young, free, wild and careless. Jessica and Warren have sex yet they do not have long-standing chemistry. Dennis is rude to her girlfriend on the phone yet he claims to love her. The characters are bound with a love that gets characterized by experimentation with drugs.

‘Sex without love is a poem by Sharon Olds. In the poem, the poet tries to understand how sex can be good without love. The poet does not understand how sex without love is right. She demonstrates this in the first stanza by quipping, how do they do it? The ones who make love without love? The poet says love is neither envious nor hurtful. The author points out that everyone is free to live and love in their own ways. The poet exclaims that love without sex is enjoyable and freeing, but sex with love can get hard although it is bliss. The poet makes an analogy of sex without love to a marathoner. She compares sex without love to a hedonist-seeking marathoner who undergoes much physical strain to attain the pleasure of winning. The poet asks how people have sex without love. The poet is in awe of the fact that some people have sex without love. The poem focuses on pointing out that sex should occur between two people who are in love.

 ‘All American poem’, is a poem by Matthew Dickman. In the poem, the poet paints love in a variety of images. The poet uses imagery to provide the reader with a view of what love is. The poet provides love scenes such as restaurants and weddings to cornfields in love with scarecrows. The poet bounces around several ideas to provide a description of love that can get understood in any language. The poet asks her lover if they get married in Nevada. The poet tries to explain his love to the extent that he paints imagery across all borders just that his love can understand how he feels for her. The poet mentions different states and cities in the country such as Oregon, New York and Kansas to paint a borderless love for his love target. From the poem, it is clear that the poet has clearly fallen in love with or for someone.

Conclusion

Love can get portrayed in many ways. In ‘ninety days’ the author thanks his friends for the love shown and support he received while recovering from drug addiction. The author is keen on rekindling old love relationships by writing the memoir. In the play, ‘this is our youth’. The author paints a picture of a young, wild, and free love. The characters in the play are young and engage in loose relationships that are not beneficial to them. In the poem, ‘sex without love’, the poet wonders how people engage in sex without love. The poet does not criticize such individuals, but rather focuses on explaining that sex should get consummated by those in love as it is bliss. In the ‘all American poem’, the poet is intent on describing the love he feels for his target. He explains the love for his target by the use of imagery and comparison with living and non-living things. A feeling of love makes the poet write such a joyful poem to describe the love he feels for her.