“Expounding hope propounding yearning” (15) shows negativity and extremely high level vocabulary. Aiken also uses alliteration “razor rasps” (5) that is important because the alliteration is a repetition of hard sounds that show anger and brutality of the winter that he is describing. This is also part of the consonance of the soft s sound that makes the winter snake-like and evil. “... rasps across the face / and in the glass our fleeting race” (5-6). The use of five stanzas of rhyming couplets in this poem, along with the vague diction, leaves the poem sounding like an ancient prophecy, mystical and fear-inducing. “Or only learning at zero’s gate / like summer’s locust the final hate” (17-18). Verbal irony can be found in this poem in the title itself, because the title implies that the poem will be about warmth and life, when in reality it is about the cold dead winter. Figurative language, more specifically personification, is used often in this poem. For example, “thunder tries to think” (8). Thunder is an inanimate noun that cannot truly think and Conrad Aiken is giving it a human characteristic. Symbols can also be found in this poem. One symbol is the locust. At the beginning of the poem, when summer is about to begin, Aiken writes “the locust sings” (1). Then, at the end of the poem, the locust dies as winter begins. In line 3, when Aiken writes “the rock explodes, the planet dies” (3) he is using imagery to reveal his hatred for the season. As noted, there was a lot of thought put into the poem “Summer” as Aiken uses literary devices to emphasize his
“Expounding hope propounding yearning” (15) shows negativity and extremely high level vocabulary. Aiken also uses alliteration “razor rasps” (5) that is important because the alliteration is a repetition of hard sounds that show anger and brutality of the winter that he is describing. This is also part of the consonance of the soft s sound that makes the winter snake-like and evil. “... rasps across the face / and in the glass our fleeting race” (5-6). The use of five stanzas of rhyming couplets in this poem, along with the vague diction, leaves the poem sounding like an ancient prophecy, mystical and fear-inducing. “Or only learning at zero’s gate / like summer’s locust the final hate” (17-18). Verbal irony can be found in this poem in the title itself, because the title implies that the poem will be about warmth and life, when in reality it is about the cold dead winter. Figurative language, more specifically personification, is used often in this poem. For example, “thunder tries to think” (8). Thunder is an inanimate noun that cannot truly think and Conrad Aiken is giving it a human characteristic. Symbols can also be found in this poem. One symbol is the locust. At the beginning of the poem, when summer is about to begin, Aiken writes “the locust sings” (1). Then, at the end of the poem, the locust dies as winter begins. In line 3, when Aiken writes “the rock explodes, the planet dies” (3) he is using imagery to reveal his hatred for the season. As noted, there was a lot of thought put into the poem “Summer” as Aiken uses literary devices to emphasize his