"Sorting Laundry"- tone

"Sorting Laundry"
by Elisavietta Ritche

This poem is full of figurative language, like the extended metaphor, which helps reveal meaning and the changing tone.  The tone in the first three quarters of the poem is relaxed and happy.  The speaker talks about folding clothes of herself and her significant other.  The laundry descriptions show how the woman is happy and comfortable in her relationship.  The relationship is long, balanced, and the man and woman accept each other.
The relaxed and happy tone changes at the end though.  There is a discovery of a "strangely tailored shirt left by a former lover" (Ritchie, 842).  This prompts the speaker to think about past failed relationships, then she begins to worry about her current relationship ending.  "A mountain of unsorted wash could not fill up the empty side of the bed" (Ritchie, 842).  This hyperbole shows how lost and lonely the speaker would be without her significant other.  The tone at the end is more worried and frantic.  After a second look, the reader may even notice that throughout the poem, the speaker talks about smaller and smaller clothes, symbolizing smaller and smaller details of the relationship.  She slowly picks apart the relationship until she becomes frantic and thinks of worse-case scenarios.
The diminishing size of the clothing helps with the change in tone that comes along with finding the strange shirt.  The tone shows how the speaker truly feels about the relationship- usually comfortable and satisfied, but scared if she thinks too much.

"Batter my heart, three-personed God"- paradox

"Batter my heart, three-personed God"
by John Donne

This poem is full of paradoxes.
The speaker is a constant sinner, and wants God to make him new, free, and pure.  The irony/paradox is that to make him new, the speaker wants God to "break, blow, burn [him]" (Donne, 840).  The speaker says that he is "betrothed to you enemy" (Donne, 840).  The basically means that the speaker is married to Satan.  Yet, the speaker loves God.
The speaker wants to stop sinning, but cannot unless God imprisons and cleanses him.  "Except you enthrall me, never shall I be free" (Donne, 840).  This paradox is assisted by the double meaning of the word "enthrall."  On one hand, enthrall means to enslave.  The speaker is saying, 'Unless you enslave me, I will not be free.'  On the other hand, enthrall can also mean to capture someone's attention.  The speaker wants God to capture his attention.  God must make an effort to keep the speaker away from sin, as opposed to the traditional method of the sinner making an effort to come back to God.  The truth revealed in the paradox is that God must imprison the speaker and take his attention in order for the speaker to be free from sin.

These drastic paradoxes show the intensity of the emotion felt by the speaker.  The author clearly gets the point across that drastic measure must be taken for the speaker to be pure.

"I taste a liquor never brewed"- metaphor

"I taste a liquor never brewed"
by Emily Dickinson

When I first read this poem, it reminded me of a line from a country song by Luke Bryan.  The lyrics say, "I'm a little drunk on you, and high on summertime."  Just like in the song, drunkenness is not being taken literally in this poem.  The poem is an extended metaphor.  Being drunk on liquor symbolizes the pure joy the speaker receives from nature.  The title, which is also the first line of the poem, specifically tells the reader that the speaker is note actually drunk on real liquor.  The liquor is "never brewed, " "Not all the Vats upon the Rhine yield such an Alcohol" (Dickinson, 797).  The liquor has never been made the way all liquors have, the alcohol has never been produced from a vat.  This clarifies that the liquor is not actually an intoxicating liquid.  The metaphor is continued when the speaker says she is "Inebriate of Air" (Dickinson, 797).

With this extended metaphor, the author vividly displays the pure and vast joy the speaker receives from nature.  Nature makes the speaker feel light and elated, like being tipsy or drunk from alcohol.

'The Convergence of the Twain"- Structure

"The Convergence of the Twain"
by Thomas Hardy

When I read that this poem is about the Titanic, a famous ship, the very first thing I noticed was that the individual stanzas look like little boats on the ocean.  The first two lines are short, like a little ship, and the last line of the three-line stanza is long, like the vast waves of the ocean.


Another benefit of the two short lines and one long line deals with the subject matter discussed in the lines.  Overall, the first two lines describe the beauty, vanity, and opulence of the Titanic.  "...mirrors meant to glass the opulent..." "Jewels in joy designed to ravish the sensuous mind" (Hardy, 778).  This rich description helps the reader picture the grandeur of the ship in its prime: A huge ship built to cater to the desires of the wealthy, exhibiting the extremes of human vanity.  However, the reader will notice that the first two line are short.  This is symbolic of the brief nature of human vanity, and more specifically, the short-lived journey of the Titanic.  The Titanic, standing as a representation, even a quintessential example, of human vanity, sank fast.  The ship and vanity did not last long.  The third line, on the other hand, is long.  This third line of the stanza tends to describe the ocean, or underwater life, especially in the first half of the poem.  This underwater life does not have the beauty of the life above water.  In fact, the scene is described in scary and repulsive terms: "The sea-worm crawls- grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent" (Hardy, 778).  These lines are longer to symbolize the eternal state of the Titanic.  The Titanic sank to the bottom of a dark ocean, where its beauty can no longer be appreciated, and for eternity, there it will stay.
The author uses structure to make a visual point, and also to show the journey of the Titanic: short-lived vanity to eternal darkness.