IndexStructure Poetic Techniques The use of similar metaphor and alliteration ConclusionBoth Elizabeth Dickinson and Robert Frost are renowned poets and their poems have contributed fabulously to world literature. Dickinson's poem "Why I Could Not Stop for Death" is one of her great works published in a series of poems in 1890. Dickinson's poetry was influenced by her obsession with themes related to immortality and death as a young woman woman. Some of the poem's themes include death, travel, kindness, and immorality. On the other hand, “The Road not Taken” by Robert Frost was published in 1916 in one of his first poetry collections. This poem was influenced by Frost's interaction with key writers in England such as Edward Thomas, with whom he spent most of his time. Key themes highlighted in this poem include journey, decisions, ambiguity, and determinism. In both poems the concept of travel is represented although they also differ in other themes. We say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original EssayStructure Regarding structure, poets have used different characteristics to develop the structure of poems. First, in Dickinson's poem, there are six stanzas, with four lines each. This makes the total number of lines in the entire poem to be twenty-four. On the other hand, in Frost's poem, there are four stanzas of five lines each. This brings the total number of lines used in the entire poem to twenty. Unlike Frost's poem, Dickinson's poem uses different syllables in each line. For example, in the first line of the first verse there are ten syllables and in the second line only seven syllables. In Frost's poem, all lines have the same syllables, eleven in each line of each stanza. Additionally, rhyme is another element used as part of structure. In Dickinson's poem, rhyme was used in the first stanza; for example, in the word such as “me” and “immortality” (Dickinson, 1890, p. 2/3). Similarly, Frost also used rhyme in his poem “The Road Not Taken.” For example, the rhyming words in the first stanza include "wood-stand-could, both-underwood." Only Frost's poem has an obvious rhyme scheme. For example in the first stanza: “Two roads diverged in a yellow forest, (a) And I regret that I cannot walk both (b) And being a traveller, long I stood still (a) And I looked at one as far away as I could ( a ) Where it bent into the undergrowth;” (b) (Frost, 1916, lines 1-4) Therefore, the rhyme scheme of this stanza is ABAAB. Both poets went against traditional punctuation rules by using line breaks. Although there is no instance of stanza breaks, line breaks are very evident in both poems, especially in Dickinson's poem. In both poems, the poets used line breaks to achieve the same purpose, to force the reader to take a short pause and create a surprise for the next line. For example, in Dickinson's poem he uses line breaks in every line of every stanza; for example, in the first stanza, the line break in the second line is used to allow the reader to pause before continuing reading. In Frost's poetry, the line break is rarely used; he only used it once in the last stanza, the third line to create a pause for the reader. Poetic Techniques The Use of Metaphor First, in both poems, the poets used metaphor as a poetic technique to explain their journey. In Dickinson's poem, the metaphor is evident in the first.
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