How Does the Technique of Poems Have an Influence on the Poems Themselves?

First, one of the most famous techniques used for poems is “metaphor”, which can be defined as the use of words or phrases that imply there is a figurative connotation hidden behind their literal meaning. In the verse “Spring and Fall: to a young child,” an obvious metaphor is seen in the portrait of “fallen leaves.” To all appearance, it is unquestionable that the general image about “fallen leaves” is nothing but ominous, making people feel melancholy. No matter how ephemeral, it is possible for one poem to influentially dominate its readers’ frame of mind in whatever way it wants. It is this totally-at-will psychological manipulation on which it completely depends whether people spend their time ― both temporary and permanent ― with their mental mood kept fine or bad, that the power of “metaphor” seen in poets, particularly in this Hopkins’s poem, can exert on their readers. Needless to say, this “psychological manipulation” is achieved only when a poem provides readers with some actual image of things. For example, suppose that there is no specific description discoverable of any picture like “fallen leaves” which represents the implied concept that nothing is undying in this poem, and that all readers can find is the too uncreative direct message just saying exactly “Yes, everything is fated to die after all.” No readers would feel any empathy with Margaret; because “no symbol in a poem” approach fails to excite their imagination and therefore manipulate their feeling. Having a lugubrious atmosphere attached to itself, the image of “fallen leaves” lets readers feel all the more sentimental and as a result, expedites their identification with Margaret. Yes, readers cannot help sharing subjective experience with Margaret. They are forced to recall their own personal incidents which have ever happened that brought home to them the lesson that nothing is imperishable, like a collapse of marriage, decease of a long-time pet, and so on. In conclusion, it can be safely said that the use of metaphor in a poem, often seen in some tangible portraits, exercises highly arbitrary mental operation over readers, making them identify with a protagonist in the verse.

The second technique to be considered is suddenly bringing a rather complicated sentence to between other simpler lines. For example, in the verse “To his Coy Mistress” by Andrew Marvell, the top sentence is like this: “Had we but world enough and time, This coyness, lady, were no crime.” Here is a modified grammar rule used in this spot, and the original form would have been: “If we had but world enough and time, this coyness, lady, would be no crime.” Usually we feel the more amount of senses of incongruity toward the “grand” grammar uses like above when they are employed in everyday colloquial talks than in such academically rhetorical expressions as include complex anaconda-length sentences, for example. For using elaborate grammar rules is thought of as against the unspoken agreement between speakers trying to make themselves understood clearly: “the simpler, the better.” Given this assumption, it is natural that when used in the form of poet, closer to the style of everyday talks for its casualty than of academic papers, the pompous grammar use draws people’s attention more, therefore encouraging them to analyze the sentence carefully. So in the previous example of “To his Coy Mistress,” readers, faced with the magnificent ellipsis of “If” and inversion of word order in the subjunctive mood, cannot help being more perspicacious to a syntax of this sentence; and as a result, they successfully receive the topic message from Marvel more properly. Thus, it follows that popping the sentence with a splendour use of grammar into between other normal lines has an influence on a poem itself in that the part it wants to emphasize becomes very convincing and outstanding to readers.