By: Hannah Williamson
Author Bio:
Hannah is a third year English Language and Literature student and a co Editor-in-Chief of ESLJ. Across her degree, she's widened the scope of literary genres that she reads, and her love for poetry has grown. In this review, she discusses Wendy Cope's poem The Orange and how it functions as an allegory for life after grief.
THE REVIEW:
Though most people won’t find everyday activities such as peeling an orange overly enamouring, this is
precisely Cope’s intention with her 1992 poem The Orange: to find humanity and joy in the mundane. A
master of light verse poetry, and therefore worthy of its Michael Braude Award for Light Verse, Cope
excels at writing lines that provoke contemplation and pleasurably, wit.
My introduction to Cope’s work, The Orange is a poem that highlights the enjoyment and brightness to
be found in an otherwise dull activity. With its ability to turn an uneventful, frankly ordinary
activity—peeling an orange—into a heartwarming act of reflectivity, it’s the kind of poem that makes a
reader want to be a poet. However, achieving a work that is as astoundingly simple yet intricately
brilliant as The Orange would be a difficult task. Behind the poem’s rather straightforward façade is a
concealed, repressed emotion: the type of sadness all too familiar to those who know grief.
Cope, in some unfathomable way, manages to capture the very moment that light comes flooding back
into a person’s life. She successfully articulates the moment of realisation that despite grief, serendipity
can be extracted from something as simple as an oversized orange. The poem, however, is not simply
about the existence of a ‘huge orange’, it’s about the jubilation that arises from it and the realisation
that one is experiencing such a feeling after a period where this exuberance was hard to come by.
Though the orange is the subject of the poem and the source from which its name is derived, it is
arguably a trivial aspect of the poem. Instead, what makes the writing so captivating is the domino
effect of this orange, whereby the speaker realises that ‘ordinary things’ such as ‘the shopping’ and ‘a
walk in the park’ are at the root of their happiness. After a period in which grief taints everything with a
particular shade of grey, the speaker is beginning to recognise that life has become easier to enjoy, and
the ‘new’, unfamiliar ‘peace and contentment’ experienced in mundane activities is indicative of healing.
The final line of the poem is likely one of Cope’s most famous lines of poetry: ‘I love you. I’m glad I exist’.
This line, though short, speaks volumes. It not only recognises the light that an object as simple as an
orange has provided, but it also acknowledges the eventual healing that occurs at the end of the
enormous battle that is grief. Of course, the poem does not promise a happiness identical to the one
experienced before grief, for that would be irresponsible- one cannot expect life to return to normality
without experiencing the effect of the gaping hole left by a loved one’s departure. Instead, the poem
simply provides a depiction of neutralisation, one where the speaker is glad to have found light in their
life once again despite that prominent void.
The Orange is a poem about the other side of grief; the side in which things start to look up, when the
world gets a bit brighter and small things make you smile again. The poem’s ability to encapsulate the
otherwise indescribable feeling of healing after grief is a tremendous achievement, as a reader can
understand such an emotion without ever having to experience it themselves- a testament to Cope’s
remarkable writing abilities.
For me, The Orange provoked sympathy for this nameless speaker who has suffered loss, and I revelled
in their enthusiasm about the little things in life. In reading the poem, I felt invited to share in the joy
gleaned from this oversized orange, as if I, along with ‘Robert and Dave’, were part of the little moments
of joy bringing light back into the speaker’s life.
Ultimately, The Orange is a poem about grief, but not necessarily for grief. Its reader does not have to
be familiar with loss- Cope’s writing does that for you. The use of caesura emphasises the simplicity of
the tedious tasks that the speaker is beginning to find less difficult. This stressing of simplicity, coupled
with the idea that such tasks were strenuous for the speaker beforehand, outlines the impact of grief on
everyday life and highlights why the speaker is delighted at the ease in which she is able to complete
them.
The Orange, in my opinion, is a poem that can be enjoyed by almost anyone. Those who are avid
consumers of poetry will marvel at Cope’s ability to convey the depth of grief, and those who are just
beginning to read poetry will appreciate the simplicity with which Cope delivers her hopeful message.
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