Poetry Analysis The Vacuum - 1171 Words

POEM ANALYSIS The Vacuum by Howard Nemerov talks about a widower and his late wife, and how he uses the vacuum as a symbol for her death. The poem expresses deep sorrow and sadness that derive from the loneliness of the speaker, after his other half’s passing away. Nemerov attempts to take his readers on a grief-stricken journey, by strategically employing figurative language (mainly personification, metaphor, simile, and alliteration), fractured rhyme schemes and turns in stanza breaks in the poem. The poem itself has many examples of personification all throughout the stanzas, suggesting that the speaker highly connects the vacuum to his wife and her demise, as well as to his ordeal after losing her; â€Å"the vacuum cleaner sulks†¦show more content†¦The bag (which was previously described as limp) is now â€Å"swelling like a belly†, reflecting the wife’s body prior to her death. Also, the phrase â€Å"eating the dust† bears resemblance to the term â€Å"bite the dust†, which is a common metaphor for dying. Finally, after her painful ordeal, the wife â€Å"begins to howl† out of her suffering and dies. Furthermore, Nemerov also employed alliteration to the poem, reflecting the widower’s constant sorrow and agony. â€Å"And still the hungry, angry heart/ Hangs on and howls, biting at air.† (lines 14-15). The repetitive use of ‘h’ in words ‘hangs’ and ‘howls’, as well as the similarity of pronunciation in words â€Å"hungry† and â€Å"angry† adds emphasis to the suffering of the widower. It can also be seen that Nemerov used a fractured rhyme scheme when writing the poem. Words like â€Å"mouth/youth†, â€Å"soul/howl†, â€Å"dirt/heart† show examples of the rhyme scheme that the poet has used. The words rhyme in a slant way and do not rhyme directly, which may suggest the feeling of incompleteness that the speaker is experiencing without his wife, as opposed to direct rhyming words that may show a somewhat positive tone and feeling of wholeness in a poem. Apart from that, the poem consists of a series of turns that reflect different parts of the speaker’s feelings and the experiences he had. The significance of these turns is made possible through the use of stanza breaks. For example, the firstShow MoreRelatedConfessional Poetry Essay1640 Words   |  7 PagesConfessional poetry is a style that emerged in the late 1950’s. Poetry of this type tends to be very personal and emotional. Many confessional poets dealt with subject matter that had previously been taboo. Death, trauma, mental illness, sexuality, and numerous other topics flowed through the works of the poetry from this movement. 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