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SONNETS (cont.)

Marilyn Hacker

“February 25”

Dear Bill, I dawdled answering your letter.

My punishment—the postal rates were raised.

The mail piled on this table has me fazed.

I think of it as clearing up the clutter.

There’s somebody I like better and better

—she’s someone else’s lover, though, not mine.

She hides her blushes in her leonine

hair, that was more like tinsel than like butter

when I ruffled it—the feminine

of avuncular. She’s twenty-five,

but age is not the muddle of the matter

whose damp wings are unfolding now, alive

out of the chrysalis that I felt shatter

when I kissed her till heat split my spine.

● Scan and analyze each line. ● In bullet form, make note of 10 literary devices

the poet uses to convey meaning.