Speaker or Narrator, and Point of View
The speaker is a person who feels alone and desperate and craves human contact
Form and Meter
Free verse, 21 lines, one stanza
Metaphors and Similes
N/A
Alliteration and Assonance
Throughout poem: "enough of" features word-ending consonance of "ough" / "f" sounds
Lines 1-2, alliteration of /s/, "sunflower / and snowshoes ... seeds, samara"
Line 4, alliteration of /f/, "farmer and faith and our father"
Line 5, alliteration of /b/, "bosom and bud"
Line 6, alliteration of /b/, "bodies" and "birds"
Lines 11-12, alliteration of /l/, "long-lost / letter"
Line 12, consonance of /er/ ending, "letter" and "dresser"
Line 15, alliteration of /w/, "world, weary"
Line 16, alliteration of /b/, "brutal and the border"
Irony
The poem's entire premise is deeply ironic: writing a poem about the "end" of poetry, about poetry's failures. In the opening lines, Limón uses a lot of obscure vocabulary and nature imagery to evoke poetic language, which is ironic because she is also known for her nature poems.
Genre
Contemporary poetry
Setting
N/A
Tone
Desperate, exhausted, overwhelmed
Protagonist and Antagonist
The speaker, against the alienation she feels from the world around her
Major Conflict
The speaker struggles throughout this poem to break through all the layers of distance and isolation she feels, admitting in the final line that she desperately needs human touch.
Climax
The poem accelerates nonstop until its sudden final line, which acts as both climax and ending.
Foreshadowing
The word "chiaroscuro" foreshadows the lines "how / a certain light does a certain thing" – both lines discuss melodrama in art.
Line 10's "the gun" may foreshadow the suicide in line 11.
Line 18's use of the first-person "I" foreshadows the honesty and vulnerability of the final line.
Understatement
There is a poignant understatement in the phrase "the acquaintance's suicide," as the speaker is not claiming the dead person as a "friend," and does not discuss this tragedy any more
Allusions
Lines 4-5 contain allusions to the Lord's Prayer (which begins "our father") and the song "America (My Country, 'Tis of Thee)"
Metonymy and Synecdoche
Lines 19-20, the "high / water" stands in as metonymy for climate crisis
Personification
N/A
Hyperbole
Line 6, "frozen birds" may be hyperbole depending on what we take it to symbolize
Line 19, "the animal saving me" may be hyperbole in the sense that the speaker's pet/animal is not singlehandedly saving her life, but it may feel that way to her sorrowful state
Onomatopoeia
N/A
