Notes for essay

Close Reading for a Sonnet

The poem “Sonnet for Minimalists” is written by the former poet laureate Mona Van Duyn. She is same as other poet, who is accustomed to keeping away from the group and living alone. When I look through on the internet, I come cross this poem and had an interest in this sonnet. So in this essay, I will analyze this poem in part of imagery, rhyme and other rhetoric devices.

“From a new peony,

 My last anthem,

 A squirrel in glee,

 Broke the budded stem”

 (Lines 1-4, Sonnet for Minimalists)

As far as I am concerned, Mrs. Van Duyn uses a serious of metaphors to demonstrate a really sad picture. In the poem, the poet uses the “New peony” and the “bedded stem” to show the born and hopes just like the situation in the spring. However, the “new peony” languish and the “bedded stem” been destroyed in the later. Mrs. The hope is destroyed and the new born is dead. Van Duyn uses this kind of change to express her emotion. She sees the broken scene and feels sorrow. She feels the time spent so quickly. The feeling of disappointed will be full of the body and soul, when all the things turn into foam. As for rhyme, the pronunciation /I/ appears frequently in these four verses, for example the word “peony”, “glee” “stem”. The poet use economy words to describe the sight and connect the poem.

“I thought, where is joy

Without fresh bloom

That old heart’s ploy

To mask the tomb”

(Lines 5-8, Sonnet for Minimalists)

The next four verses are Mrs. Van Duyn’s own thought. It has same tone as the first stanza. “Without fresh bloom,” the life will not be really joyful; the life will turn to dim, terrible and lifeless. “Old heart” began to talk about “mask the tomb”. In the one hand, the poet uses “old heart”, “tomb” to express her fear to the dead. She is hopeless and helpless. The “old heart,” “tomb,” are the metaphors. That means the travel of the life is closing the end. In the other hand, there are also some rhymes in this poem. As we focus on word end “bloom” and “tomb,” they both have the pronunciation /m/. This stanza is in the decline tone when you read it. It is useful to create a dismal and dim atmosphere.

“Then a volunteer

Stalk sprung from sour

Bird-drop this year

Burst in frantic flower”

(Lines9-12, Sonnet for Minimalists)

In this stanza, the poet changes her style in writing. “The volunteer”, as optimism imagery, can appear and grow up under a very hard environment. The “volunteer” have capacity to live even if it is “stalk sprung from sour” land. Likewise the “bird-drop” seed can “burst” and then become a “flower” around an impossible environment. The poet uses these two imageries in order to emphasis she still have optimistic opinion. It can see that in these verses there are three words all have the letter “S”. In dealing with the rhyme in the poem, we can notice that each verse has been connected. Once I heard a video about this poem, I found that when the speaker read “Stalk sprung from sour”, she links the words and makes the verse more dynamic. So, these stanzas which are full with hope and expectation are different from the first one.

“The world’s perverse,

But it could be worse”

                                       (Lines 13-14, Sonnet for Minimalists)

From the last two verses “The world’s perverse, but it could be worse”, we can see that she is well know the real value of the life. The world has different change in every day; it could be better or worse. But the poet is trend to the second one. As we can see that the second verse is said the world could be worse. That is the poet’s attitude about the life. It is also stand the life. When we are young, the world is innocent, without struggle and plots. But everything changed when we become an adult, the world became complex and worse. And we are going to the end of the journal of life. As for the rhyme, this verse is an end rhyme. “Perverse” and “worse” are both have the letter “-se” and they both pronounce /s/. It is means that they have the same sound and rhyme. These two same /s/s make the ending become more musical, and more clear and coherent. It is a negative verse, so the tone which fit this verse is decline. In a word, it is a really interesting famous ending of this poem.

In my opinion, the poet is smart. She lists the metaphor “anthem peony”, “broken bedded stem” “without fresh bloom’s joy” and “tomb” to show her mood which is lament the life has entered the evening scene. She uses some simple words which hide the emotion. Therefore this poem is fit the title “minimalists”. As for the sonnet, she follows the simple principle to express her emotion. Mrs. Van Duyu is a really fantasy poet.