Harrison Inocencio Assignment 1

      One allusion that Ludvigson references in the poem is the poem "The Connonization" by John Donne, who was an English 18th century poet and writer. The poem is alluded to casually near the end of the poem, appearing in the line "he's reciting Donne's Canonization: For god's sake hold your tongue and let me love." This allusion is an interesting one because the poem itself is about an elicit love affair between to individuals, and addresses a very complex situation and thoughts that come with such a love affair. At first glance, such a work would seem out of place in this story, where while their is love, it is not in the form of an affair or anything questionable. The poem itself while symbolizing the couples love for each other, as the husband is singing it for her, also goes deeper by bringing into question the validity of their relationship. The simple presence  of the poem brings into question perhaps the future of the couple, that like the love in the poem, their love is also somehow forbidden, or not meant to be. This train of thought leads to yet another event that while not an allusion (as its not directly stated by the text) we can still derive by examining the date that this poem is written in contextually is 1942. 1942 is of course the date in which the United States entered the second World War, and the year in which many of her armed forces were sent overseas across both peninsulas to fight and die in foreign lands. Ultimately, this context allows us to relate the forbidden love in "Canonization",  to another kind of forbidden love, or rather one that cannot exist, which is the love that turns to worry and distress as a soldier has to leave his family behind and fight in a war. In the end that is what this allusion is trying to do, it represents the future distress that the author would feel as her father marches to war perhaps never to return, and watch her mother grief.