Flattery Diction

A distinguished sense of hollowness, and darkness is discernable in George Elliot Clarke’s poem “Blank Sonnet”. This poem expresses, the author’s difficult and awkward communication with a lover through a broken relationship. word choice and imagery is imperative to the overall effect and tone of the poem. The usage of an atypical sonnet stylization, broken sentences, forms of metaphors, symbolism, sensory language, and alliteration form strong imagery, and a sense of disconnect. The overall effect leaves the reader with a resonating feeling of emptiness.

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.

The imagery in the poem, specifically natural imagery, helps use the reader’s senses to develop a vivid depiction of the speaker’s connection to nature and dissatisfaction with the surrounding reality. The speaker’s continued use of the “moon” reflects her attribution of feminine identity and idolistic character to the moon. As opposed to referencing herself and her personal insomnia, she uses the imagery of the moon “beyond sleep” to convey her internal struggles with insomnia and her reality. Throughout the poem, the speaker also refers to shining, reflective surfaces, such as “a body of water or a mirror”, to describe the inverted reality in which the speaker experiences reciprocated love. Reflective surfaces often invert the image that is projected into them, seemingly distorting the true nature and reality of the projected image. The speaker’s reference to this reflective imagery highlights her desire to escape the burden of a patriarchal society and assume an independent and free feminine identity. Specifically, the use of natural imagery from the references to the “moon” and “a body of water” convey the speaker’s desire to take refuge within the Earth or in the feminine identity of the Earth, Mother Earth. Feminine identities are often related and associated with aspects of nature due to the natural cycle of the menstrual period and the natural process of procreation. The speaker takes advantage of these connotations to suggest Earth and natural imagery as an escape from the man-made terrors of male dominated society. In the second stanza, the speaker uses extensive imagery to develop metaphors conveying the speaker’s experience of jealousy of the moon

Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Sonnet IV” is a sonnet spoken from the point of view of a woman who is permitting herself to remember an old lover over the duration of her cigarette. The poem is set up through the classical structure of a Petrarchan sonnet and shares the topic of a lost lover. The octave follows the course of the dream, which takes the form of smoke and shadows. The volta marks the end of the cigarette and the dream, but the speaker still continues her memories in the sestet to follow. Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Sonnet IV” is similar to other Petrarchan sonnets in both structure and topic. Upon closer inspection, however, Millay’s poem challenges the classical topic of love seen in Italian sonnets by reversing the typical attempt at immortalization of the lover’s beauty and greatness through memory. This is creates a tension which aids to divide the poem into two parts, the octave and sestet. Through these lines of the poem, Millay employs enjambment throughout both the octave and sestet and end stop in only the volta. This aids in drawing attention to the change in diction from long, euphonious, and elevated words in the opening portion of the poem, to shorter, more cacophonous words in the final six lines. In the final two lines of her sonnet, Millay utilizes a metaphor of a setting sun to compare the speaker’s moment of memory to the sun setting behind a hill. St. Vincent Millay makes use of this contrast and these literary devices to emphasize her critique,

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

In the poem the speaker tells us about how his father woke up early on Sundays and warmed the house so his family can wake up comfortably. We are also told that as he would dress up and head down stairs he feared ¨the chronic angers of that house¨, which can be some sort of quarrel between his father and his mother in the house. This can also lead the reader to believe that the father may have had been a hard dad to deal with. However the father would polish his son's shoes with his cracked hands that ached. This shows the love that the father had for his son and now that the son has grown he realizes what his father did for him. The sons morals and feelings have changed him because as he has grown to become a man he has learned the true meaning of love is being there for one's family and not expecting it to be more than what it is. Consequently this teaches him a lesson on how much his father loved him and how much he regrets not telling him thank

In this poem, we see the tone light and free, also much imagery. We see this immediately with the first line saying, the “afternoon was the colour of water falling through sunlight” (1). We immediately get a sense of a beautiful day, maybe even fall with the trees descriptions in the following line, “trees glittered with the tumbling of leaves” (2). Lowell shows such beautiful imagery throughout her poem especially in her first two stanzas, that when we read that they are in the middle of war in the third stanza, that it is slightly shocking. That there are “two little boys, lying flat on their faces” (7) and that they are, “carefully gathering red berries” (8). Here Lowell shows that it is still a beautiful day but the darker reality is that they are currently in a war. Then we start to see the poem more in a melancholy light. That these two little boys are picking berries to save for later, instead of enjoying it right now. However one day the boys wish that “there will be no more war” (10), and that then, they could in fact enjoy their berries, their afternoon and “turn it in my fingers”. In this poem, we clearly see the different tones throughout. Lowell shows us the light tone, then a more melancholy tone and then finally a hopeful tone.

The diction used by the speaker illustrates the pain and misery he endures whenever he sees the “gleams” on her face (Line 4). As the speaker tries to avoid this woman’s beauty is forced by temptation to look upon her face and he is reminded of the same pain and misery he must avert. In the couplet of this English sonnet the speaker displays his method of avoiding his once beloved. The speaker claims, “so that I wink or else hold down my head, because your blazing eyes my bale have bred” (Lines 13-14). This significant quote from Gascoigne’s saddened and pain stricken speaker sheds light as to how and why he continuous tries to evade the source of his misery.

Not all relationships are mutually beneficial to the people in them. In many cases, one or both people in the relationship can feel negatively impacted by it. Likewise, when relationships come to an end, the people involved may feel incredibly hurt and broken. In George Gascoigne’s poem “For That He Looked Not upon Her,” he describes the devastation felt by a man that was the result of the ending of his relationship with a woman. The man, who claims to have been mistreated by the woman, explains how he will not be tricked and mistreated again by going back to the woman.

The first stanza uses concrete imagery to depict a working man “with cracked hands that ached” (3), the speaker’s father, starting a fire. The second stanza starts with warm connotations of the fire rescuing his home from the cold; however, the stanza ends with the speaker expressing his fear, a figurative coldness, of “the chronic angers of that house” (9). The third stanza completes the epiphany that the final line of the first stanza, “No one ever thanked him” (5) hints at. It is at this point that the speaker understands that his father expresses his love differently. While the speaker was looking for an overt expression of his father’s love, his father, a working man, can only show his love with the means by which he is familiar. To the father, love is an expression of actions, actions that the speaker is oblivious to during his childhood. By the setting being early Sunday morning, it shows that the father’s actions, as a symbol of his love, are omnipresent and supersede his own desire for rest. The final lines of every stanza reflect the speaker’s growing realization that he was indeed loved by his father, that he initially didn’t recognize his father’s actions as an expression of this love, and that his obliviousness to this unfamiliar expression of love helped contribute to what

“the sonnet-ballad” by Gwendolyn Brooks is a Shakespearean sonnet that uses imagery to paint a picture of death/war stealing a lover’s happiness by portraying that the man is seduced away. This passage portrays that the lover cannot be happy for her significant other has been taken away by death/war. War has a negative effect on women, and the relationships with their lovers. When death takes away a woman’s lover, they must overcome sorrow and anguish of their loss.

One word the author repeated many times throughout the poem was “within” as he stated in“that is the HOUSE within the HOUSE . . ./There is a NIGHT within the NIGHT,--”(Bidart lines 18-19). This symbolizes the complexity of the speaker’s mind that he always thinks deeper than the surface. Furthermore, by him putting both the “house” and the “night” in all capital letters, he certainly wants to stress these words as the element of imagery that are significant to him. Since his lover in the poem passed away, as implied in the title, by him thinking deeply about the night and the house shows how much he’s missing her and the valuable memories they had together in the house and during the night.

The speaker refers to the night as his acquaintance. This implies that the speaker has a lot of experience with the night, but has not become friends with it. Thus, because even the night, which has been alongside the speaker in comparison to anything or anyone else, is not a companion to the speaker, the idea of loneliness is enhanced. In addition, “rain” (2) is used to symbolize the speaker’s feelings of gloom and grief, because there is continuous pouring of the rain, which is unlikely to stop. In line 3, “city light” is used to convey the emotional distance between the speaker and society. Although the speaker has walked extensively, he has not yet interacted with anyone – thus distancing himself even further from society. Moreover, the moon, in lines 11 to 12, is used as a metaphor of the speaker’s feelings. The speaker feels extremely distant from society that he feels “unearthly.” The idea of isolation and loneliness in this poem is used as the theme of the poem; and the use of the setting and metaphors underscores the idea that the speaker feels abandoned from society.

In this sonnet, Shakespeare uses metaphor to create a vivid image in the reader's mind of the passage of time, old age, and death by describing the Fall season, the end of a day, and the burning out of a flame.

In order to describe the nature of the world, the lyrical subject of the sonnet uses dark and negative metaphors, which present the world as a "painted veil" (l. 1) and as a "gloomy scene" (l. 13). This symbol of