There is no doubt that the form of a poem in its meaning are interconnected. Without one their cannon be the other. Poets hide messages in the layout of their poems and create feeling with form. Poets such as E.E. Cummings and Emily Dickinson use poetic devices such as enjambment and line stopping, assonance and consonance, and word play to connect the form of the poem to the words in the poem. Though many of their poems’ meanings cover many subjects, by using formal elements of poetry, Cummings and Dickinson create poetry that has a resounding impact on the reader; they create lessons for us to remember, poetry that will not be forgotten.
One of the most notable things about E.E. Cummings is his interesting usage of line stopping and enjambment. …show more content…
“I heard a Fly buzz – when I died –“ (506). As we read the beginning of the line, we understand that the narrator can hear a fly buzzing, this good imagery, by using onomatopoeia, but otherwise, not full of impact. It is only when she follows through with the rest of the line that we get hit with “when I died”. By staying true to the form of the iambic tetrameter, she creates a huge leap from bland to exciting all in one line. This juxtaposition from one extreme to the other drives home a feeling of intrigue, the reader wants to continue this poem, find out about the death of the narrator, and what a fly has anything to do with …show more content…
In “I Heard a Fly Buzz”, she uses similes and metaphors to keep the audience invested. An example of this is in the line “And then the Windows failed…” (506). Here she is using the metaphor ‘the eyes are the windows to the soul,’ and making it so that the reader first has to figure out that the eyes are the windows she is referring to, and then they can ‘replace’ the word windows with eyes, and then the reader sees the full line as ‘my eyes closed because I died’. By using the complicated one word reference to a metaphor that the reader may or may not know of, Dickinson forces the reader to actually think about what she is
One of the most notable things about E.E. Cummings is his interesting usage of line stopping and enjambment. …show more content…
“I heard a Fly buzz – when I died –“ (506). As we read the beginning of the line, we understand that the narrator can hear a fly buzzing, this good imagery, by using onomatopoeia, but otherwise, not full of impact. It is only when she follows through with the rest of the line that we get hit with “when I died”. By staying true to the form of the iambic tetrameter, she creates a huge leap from bland to exciting all in one line. This juxtaposition from one extreme to the other drives home a feeling of intrigue, the reader wants to continue this poem, find out about the death of the narrator, and what a fly has anything to do with …show more content…
In “I Heard a Fly Buzz”, she uses similes and metaphors to keep the audience invested. An example of this is in the line “And then the Windows failed…” (506). Here she is using the metaphor ‘the eyes are the windows to the soul,’ and making it so that the reader first has to figure out that the eyes are the windows she is referring to, and then they can ‘replace’ the word windows with eyes, and then the reader sees the full line as ‘my eyes closed because I died’. By using the complicated one word reference to a metaphor that the reader may or may not know of, Dickinson forces the reader to actually think about what she is