The Poetry Of Linda McCarriston

12 Pages 3020 Words

ge, contempt and human brokeness. She uses words that incite emotion and metaphors that mirror the acts she describes. The impact on the reader is powerful. In A Castle In Lynn, the first very long sentence that doesn’t end until the third stanza creates an overpowering and crushing feeling. The length of the sentence forces the reader to keep going to the end. Something disturbing is felt in the imagery of darkness created metaphorically by comparing memory to a darkened theater coupled with the masturbatory stroking by the man. The initial short sound of the first vowel (i) in the word “in” repeated throughout the first stanza and in the name of the poem (A Castle In Lynn) emphasizes to the reader the act of intercourse; a man putting his penis in a woman over and over. Additionally, the first two stanzas contains words that have distinct and definite ending sounds such as “t”, “p”, “k” and “d” that simultaneously generate an impression of strength belong to the voice speaking.
. A Castle In Lynn
“In the hometown tonight,
in the quiet before sleep,
a man strokes himself in the darkened
theater of memory”, Best old”
remembrance, he gets to play it
as slow as he needs, as his hand,
savvy tart of a million reruns,
plays the tune, plays the parts

Mary Olivers informs us in her poetry handbook that sounds in a poem are not random but chosen (Oliver p.17). She also believes words that have a consonant that cannot be sounded at all without a vowel, which at the end of a syllable cause the breath to suddenly stop “not only have a definition but have a connotation and a felt quality” (Oliver p. 22). The words quiet, tonight, and “a man strokes” in the first stanza have such characteristics and aid in shaping the poem’s powerful tone with assertive declarative sentences.
The entire poem has eight stanza and four lines in each. A very structured poem necessary to create the s...