LITERATURE

Name: Omawumi Onifade

Instrutor: John Pickette

Course: ENG 200-7817

Date:10 October 2020

Poem: Strawberrying

The author uses rhymes in a few of the lines. They include lines 4 and 5: “the blackbird’s

wing-fleck. Gripped to a reed/he shrieks his ko-ka-ree in the next field” (Swenson,1991, stanza 1). The last words reed and field rhyme. Another example is lines 31-34:

“When hidden away in a damp hollow under moldy,

leaves, I come upon a clump of heart-shapes,

once red, now spider spit-gray, intact but empty,

still attached to their dead stem,” (Swenson,1991,stanza 5).

The rhymes alternate moldy-empty and shapes-stems. These two groups of words are slant

rhymes as they sound similar but not uniform. The slant rhymes serve to create vivid imagery of

what the subject matter is experiencing while undertaking strawberrying picking. It leaves the

impression that this is not just a simple case of picking strawberries but a reflection of whatever

turmoil the subject might be experiencing in their life.

There is the use of alliteration in lines 24-26, “Ripeness/wants to be ravished, as udders of

cows when hard,/the blue-veined bags distended, ache to be stripped” (Swenson, 1991, stanza 4).

The “r” sound is repeated in ripeness and ravished to emphasize the tempting appearance of the

strawberry. The words “distended” and “stripped” almost rhyme to also emphasize the imagery

of the strawberries to that of a cow’s udder.

There are examples of assonance in the first two lines, “Many a plump head/drops on the

heap in the basket. The words head and heap are rhythmic. The other example is lines 12, “ Here

and there,”(Swenson,1991, stanza 1). They add flow into the poem.

Overall, the devices used including the use of rhymes generate a sense of urgency to the

authors’ message. The author seems to be comparing something sinister or scandalous to the

innocent action of children picking strawberries. The use of imagery such as “murder-red”

speaks of untold trauma experienced by the author but presented with hidden meaning. At the

end of the poem, it is clear the author is not talking about just picking strawberries but some

kind of violent act that has left a negative impact on them. Overall, the tone of the poem is too

graphic and adult for children as the subject matters.

References

Swenson, M. (1991).The Complete Love Poems of May Swenson. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.