Kate Camp's 'Unfinished Love Theorem'

In her poem “Unfinished Love Theorem” published in 2001, author Kate Camp writes about the concept of love by comparing it first to ocean waves and then lines, to help describe the speaker’s feelings and understanding towards it. On the surface, the poem seems very simple- it is just describing a single idea, but when analysing it we can see that Camp is trying to emphasize that love changes and is never simple; it is full of turbulences and instability. There is a lot more to love than meets the eye, so it cannot be described in just one way. Some specific language features are used to emphasize this.
In the first two stanzas Camp writes that love can travel in either waves or lines depending on the situation. She uses a metaphor and says when she first noticed it, “it was travelling in waves/and I could just see its sail pop hopefully up” (Lines 5-6). This metaphor compares love to a sailing ship travelling on the ocean waves rather than in straight lines, to accentuate that in the beginning love is unsure, and the speaker is trying her best to navigate her way through this unfamiliar and uneven territory, overcoming obstacles. She is
Two notable language features are present in this stanza to add depth to the description. Alliteration is used with the repetition of the words “spills, silver, and stairs”, where the repeating “s” sounds help to reinforce a clear and emphasized image in the reader’s head of love being this truly beautiful and blissful concept. Assonance is another language feature also used where the vowel “I” is used multiple times: “night lights/shining, seeming so bright, so very surprising” (25-26). This technique links all of the words together so they flow nicely, and draws attention to them as they stress how bright and enchanting love