Analysis Of The Poem ' If I Should Learn

While the woman may outwardly profess her desire for her sexual partner, the dispassionate diction and detached tone within the sonnet suggest otherwise. For, in acknowledging her lover’s close proximity, she states that she is “urged”

The main theme within Clarke’s Sonnet is his distance and inability to communicate with a lover. This poem is written for his lover as an attempt to connect with her, although within the poem, he is continuing to communicate poorly. The way in which he copes with this broken relationship drives the tone of the poem.

The main theme within Clarke’s Sonnet is his distance and inability to communicate with a lover due to his alcoholism, and the way in which his coping mechanism, and alcoholism affects this relationship. In the opening octet,

Edna St. Vincent Millay’s sonnet, “What lips my lips have kissed and where and why,” is about being, physically or mentally jaded, and thinking back to the torrid love of one’s youth. The “ghosts” that haunt her are the many lovers of her past; she’s specifically trying to remember them all. She recalls the passion she experienced and how there was a certain feeling within herself. Millay shows this through her vivid imagery, use of the rain as a literary device and by paralleling herself with a lonely tree.

Edna St. Vincent Millay was a poet who was conventional in her execution of poems using the form of a Shakespearean sonnet, but her words are powerful. She wrote of love and loss that resonate with readers to this day. A poem illustrating her choice of words is “If I should learn, in some quite casual way.” St. Vincent Millay writes of the speaker thinking of how he or she will react calmly if in some tragic way he or she discover a lover is dead. It is a poem that hits a reader hard with its sadness but its serenity in how she writes. It is tragic how the speaker says he or she will hold in guilt. “If I should learn, in some quite casual way” is a poem that deals with the theme of losing a lover, as well as how the form of a Shakespearean sonnet and the author’s rhyme scheme and word choice make the poems meaning more intense, as well as who the author is talking to and who the speaker could be.

Millay uses personification in the sonnet to turn the figurative idea of chaos into a character that she is able to control and tame. In the first line of the sonnet, the speaker asserts “I will put Chaos into fourteen lines” (Millay 1), giving this non-human, abstract idea human-like characteristics. By turning chaos into Chaos, Millay effectively shifts Chaos into a human-like character. The speaker of the poem showcases their ability to use language as a power to confine this personified Chaos, to the strict form of the sonnet. In the second line, the speaker addresses Chaos as a “him”

The poem’s structure as a sonnet allows the speaker’s feelings of distrust and heartache to gradually manifest themselves as the poem’s plot progresses. Each quatrain develops and intensifies the speaker’s misery, giving the reader a deeper insight into his convoluted emotions. In the first quatrain, the speaker advises his former partner to not be surprised when she “see[s] him holding [his] louring head so low” (2). His refusal to look at her not only highlights his unhappiness but also establishes the gloomy tone of the poem. The speaker then uses the second and third quatrains to justify his remoteness; he explains how he feels betrayed by her and reveals how his distrust has led him

Befitting of the overall tone, the sonnet commences with uncertainty, plainly illustrated with the language of the speaker’s initial statement: “I’m not sure how to hold my face when I dance” (1), for he arranges his words to portray a feeling of vacillation. Immediately following this reflective proclamation, the speaker poses three questions, all of which allude to the contemplative tone apparent in the text. While these inquiries regard the subject of dance, the speaker also intends for them to be metaphors for the uncertainty he, as a black man, has for his place in society. His questions are rapid-fire, almost probing the audience for answers that are seemingly nonexistent. As a result of the rapidity, there is an absence of breaks for these questions to be answered, evincing the speaker’s belief that they, in fact, have no answers. These first four sentences are crucial in the sonnet’s development, as they kindle ruminations for both the speaker and the audience.

“On Being Cautioned against Walking on an Headland Overlooking the Sea, Because it was Frequented by a Lunatic,” Charlotte Smith’s sonnet, comments on the poet’s feelings toward this lunatic and the thought process he instigates in her mind. By using different syntax to describe her two characters, Smith draws the attention of the reader to the message in the sonnet instead of the scene on the surface. The structure of the English sonnet also lends to the poem’s power, giving Smith a perfect avenue to deliver her message.

In Wordsworth’s sonnet, he uses only the four rhymes to show that, even in constraining himself, he is still free. He may be confined to a cell or a rhyme scheme, but it is in such confinements that he finds liberty. Millay, too, is playing off of this idea – simply by being a woman she is confined by society, but through her poetry she can recognized for the brilliant writer she is; hence, she quite literally frees her poetic reputation by constraining herself to such strict bounds. The irony in this reference to Wordsworth’s work, however, is the contrasting subject matters – he writes of metaphorical nuns, while she writes of rejection and lovers.

Millay uses the details of her screaming and the definitions in her mind in attempts to provide insight into her current state of being, and she successfully does so. Later on in the poem, Millay describes pain and her remorse, which tie into what she is essentially trying to communicate with the use of the poem.

The sonnet opens with a statement of uncertainty as the speaker admits, “I’m not sure how to hold my face when I dance” (1). Immediately thereafter, the speaker poses three questions, all of which allude to the contemplative tone of the poem. While these inquiries regard the subject of dance, the speaker also intends for them to be metaphors for the uncertainty he, as a black man, has for his place in society. His questions are rapid-fire, almost probing the audience for answers that may not truly exist. An obvious lack of breaks for these questions to be answered shows that the speaker must believe that they, in fact, have no answers. These first four sentences are crucial in the sonnet’s development, as they provoke thought and contemplation so that the reader’s mind can be in the same place as the speaker.

Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Sonnet IV” follows many of the conventions of the traditional Petrarchan sonnet. It follows the traditional rhyming scheme and octet, sestet structure. However it challenges the conventions of the typical subject of the Italian sonnet, unrequited love. In the octet at the beginning of the poem Millay uses images that give a sense of transience and in the ending sestet of the sonnet she contrasts the sense of impermanence given earlier with the idea that the speaker cannot forget the smiles and words of their ex-lover. This contrast between permanence and transience illustrates Millay’s interest in a fugacious relationship with everlasting memories. After further analysis of Millay’s highly structured rhyming scheme which puts emphasis on the last words of each line. She uses these words to further express her interest in exploring impermanent relationships by using words that are associated with an end or death.

In the passage, Mrs. Millard's husband is supposedly dead, and how she takes the news it is not the typical reaction. In the text it says she whispered '' free, free, free!" (236) I believed she felt as if a weight has been lifted off of her shoulders, a weight that has been building her entire marriage. This short story was written in the late 1800s, which tells me that the author was writing from what she sees saw and experienced from her surroundings. In that time

A comparison of Sharon Olds’ “Still Life in Landscape” with Linda Pastan’s “I Am Learning to Abandon the World.”