After reading the four poems, the one that stood out to me the most was the poem From The Manyoshu. The reason being that it’s a poem that is revolved around the concept of love. When it comes to the discussion of love and romanticism, in a way it has always interested me. Love, in my opinion, is such a big word and most importantly a big feeling that most people don’t know how to explain at times, which I find fascinating. Personally, I’m guilty of this because I’ve told people that I’ve loved them, but in reality, I never actually understood what love is or if I even felt it towards them. What intrigued me the most was how throughout this poem he manages to express his love by comparing it to things in nature.

With this said, love in this poem isn’t shown on a positive note but in a sad way. It demonstrates a love story that ended with people hurt because of the distance between them. In the poem, we can immediately see that he loves his wife especially when it comes to his words. He just proves how much he cares about her and the regret that he feels for leaving. For example, when he says ” Away I have come, parting from her…My heart aches within me…My wife waving her sleeve to me…But the sleeves of my garment are wetted through with tears.” (Lines 13-30) This just shows the pain that he’s going through because he’s leaving his wife behind that he even shows emotion because he begins to cry. I find this interesting because it goes against that famous saying that “Real men don’t cry” which in my opinion just shows how strong the power of love can be that it can break the manliness of man.

Although the other poems were interesting I felt that the song Right My Wrongs by Bryson Tiller related to this poem a lot more. This song is a love song as well, but it revolves around cheating and asking for forgiveness. Throughout the song, it’s clear that he talks about the multiple amounts of times that he’s cheated on his girlfriend and how he regrets doing so. With this said, he realizes how his wrong actions have caused him to lose someone who actually cared for him and how he wants her back for good. Which is why he has a repetitive chorus saying “Right my wrongs” because he wants to make things right and be faithful towards her and show her the love that she deserves. In this song, he also states “I’ve gotta right my wrongs, with you is where I belong, you’ve been down from the go, recognition is what you want, and it’s something that I should know.” This just shows the regret that he’s feeling for being a cheater and a liar and how he’ll do anything to get her back.

This song relates to the poem because it shows regret and the desire to have your loved one back. Both of these examples show regret because in the poem the husband regrets leaving his wife behind and being away from her and in the song Bryson Tiller realizes regrets cheating. It also shows regret because you can tell that both the husband and Bryson are miserable without their significant other’s presence. Both examples also show how they want their loved one back because in the poem he regrets not spending so much time with his wife and even cries about it and in the song, it shows that Bryson wants his girlfriend back because he promises many things to convince her to give him another chance. The only thing that is different between these two examples is that in the poem the couple, in my opinion, are still together they’re just far away from each other and it just shows how much he misses his wife. And in the song, Bryson isn’t with her and he actually did something significantly wrong which was cheating on her and he’s basically on his knees asking for another chance.