Blog 4#

The stylistic and linguistic devices an artist use in their work contribute to the meaning of their work.  Culler aims to demonstrate the relationship between poetry and rhetoric by exploring their similarities and distinguishing characteristics. Although there are other tools that writers can use, some devices contribute to the creation of mental images and experiences that a reader derives while reading. The scholars highlight the using metaphors, irony, metonymy and synecdoche in literary work like poetry as the most appropriate tools towards that goal which has earned them the phrase “master tropes”. Studying the language of poetry broadens a person’s thinking and it helps both the writer and reader in determining many meanings from the tools that are in use. In “Driving into the Wreck” by Adrienne Rich the persona uses first person to tell a narrative that draws in the reader’s empathy by drawing them in using these figures of speech to shape their experience. In my view the poem shifts the reader’s perspectives regarding situations since they can try to analyze a situation from the persona’s position. “I am having to do this/ not like Cousteau with his/ assiduous team/ aboard the sun-flooded schooner/ but here alone” give a peak into the mental state of the person. The use of metaphors further describe the circumstances which a reader can use to derive deeper meaning. The persona says “We are, I am, you are by cowardice or courage the one who find our way back to this scene carrying a knife, a camera a book of myths in which our names do not appear” is symbolic of the struggles people have especially from historical injustices that have very few recorded instances of personal experiences.