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What Is Special About The Language Of Poetry?. In The Penguins

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What is special about the language of poetry?
In the Penguins edition of Literary Terms and Literary Theory the definition of a poem is ‘a work of art’(Penguin p678) however, a poem can be a lot more than that. Poems are a shortened version of a story, which can be filled with intense emotion or be light hearted. The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms informs those that there are three main categories of poems, lyrical, which is a more elaborate form of poem and sometimes called an elegy, narrative, a more of a storytelling poem and a dramatic poem, which speaks for itself.
A poem is something special, to be admired, read and even indulged in. By reading a poem, a person can reminisce of memories past or simply fall in love with the …show more content…

Coming from a very creative and educated background Rossetti used poetry as an outlet to express her opinions on the activities and social downfalls of society. For instance, Rossetti involved herself in ‘good works’ as all middle class women did at the time by helping and visiting sick and needy people during the time of the Crimean War. By eighteen fifty nine, Rossetti had begun assisting at the St Magdalene Penitentiary in Highgate, helping prostitutes and destitute women. Through this time of working with these women, Rossetti used her experiences of this time in her life by voicing her concerns on the control of these women and the use of sex by men through her poetry and as a cosseted middle class woman, Rossetti used these experiences to voice women’s subjugation. An example of this can be found in stanza two. It could be interpreted that Rossetti is drawing on her knowledge of these women’s cruelty by men, as in lines eleven to nineteen, Rossetti describes a want or need to hide oneself from something or someone and has used a good sense of metaphors to show this which becomes clear in line twelve, ‘A veil, a cloak, and other wraps’ (Rossetti 1862). To back up this interpretation of hiding oneself, it could be said that line seventeen of the same stanza, Rossetti writes, ‘Nipping and clipping thro’ my wraps and all.’ This could be inferred to as men ‘mauling’ and ‘groping’ at these

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