Nikki L.

Oliva
ABE 4-1
Literary Critisism: In Paris with You by James Fenton

In Pairs with You is a poem about love and regret. Paris, a city traditionally
associated with love and romance, is the poems setting but Fenton substitutes the
clichs of love poetry with the description of two people in a neglected Parisian
hotel room. The persona describes the lover, the room and his confused emotions.
The poem has a light hearted but sensuous mood.

Who is speaking in the poem and where are they speaking from? The speaker
seems cynical, possibly drunk and probably full of self pity. The internal rhyme of
earful with tearful seems a bit colloquially crass and forced as if the speaker is
drunk or feeling very sorry for themselves

The poem is made up of a repeating stanza pattern, with a very different third
stanza which makes it stand out. The poem is structured in a song like way and uses
repetition, and internal rhymes to emphasize the rhythm. The rhymes wounded
and marroonded heighten the sense of the speaker being full of self pity. They are
hurt and even make up a word to emphasise their suffering, significantly ending in
ded.
In the line But I am in Paris with you. The anticlimax is deliberately flat in
tone. The romance of Paris and the intimacy of the second person pronoun you is
bathetic due to the qualification of the preposition But. This is a compromise and
compromising relationship but no romantic idealism or excitement involved. If the
speaker is in Paris then they have been before and this visit is full of revisions and
reminders of the previous visit where a more romantic time was perhaps enjoyed.

The speaker is comparing where he is now, with where he was before when he was
full of trust and love.

What is the conflict or source of conflict in the poem? The poem seems to explore a
now situation with a before time when another relationship was central to the
speakers existence. . This conflict or tension between two experiences is ironically
both humorous and sad; both polarities delivered in a perhaps pseudo-cynical,
worldly tone. As reader we alternate in our feeling towards the speaker and we feel
sympathetic to the you stuck in Paris with a lover very much hooked on looking
backwards towards another love.
However the casual, careless voice who dismisses all the sights of Paris and
draws attention to their apparently sleazy hotel room, gradually becomes
physically involved with the mysterious you and things become more interesting. it
is almost as if the early you is really not the you in the room but the you in his
past, still very much present in his/her mind.
The arbitrariness of Doing this and that plays down the sexual contact.
There is no expectation of sexual ecstasy or gymnastics here. Yet it is precisely this
lack of expectation that ironically gives the promise of change. They may not talk of
love which is a painful reminder of what happened before, but now, they may refer
to what they do as Paris a euphemism if ever there was one.

The poems last stanza shows a change of focus and tone. The world weary
dismissal of love and Paris has become transformed into a celebration of sexual
contact. The you is now a source of excitement: Im in Paris with the slightest
thing you do the humour is apparent! This version of Paris has liberated the
speaker from hurt and recrimination.
The talk in bed has healed the cynicism, he/she is eager to make love and to
enjoy Paris with the partners mouth and other parts no doubt! The euphemistic
south with suggestions of sexual arousal and different sexual positioning shows

again the shift in the tone and meaning of Paris by the end of the poem, so when
we arrive at the last line, it really means that I am in Paris with you instead of the
earlier implication of either bitter regret or that he is mentally actually in Paris with
the you he was previously involved with.