A Lady Amy Lowell Literary Devices
From John Keats dreamy sonnets to the Edgar Allen Poe s macabre laments, the most
renowned poems across movements and writing styles capture and illustrate the
fleeting emotions one feels when a soul impacts another. Through diction, devices,
and form, a poet imparts the impression of his muse, the source of these emotions,
much like an artist illustrates his source of inspiration through any combination of
media. Amy Lowell, a twentieth century pioneer of modern poetry, is one such poet.
In her poem, A Lady , the muse is not only the subject, but the audience, whom she
directly addresses. To describe her muse, Lowell uses allusions to the arts, elegant and
domestic imagery, and repetitive sounds; in conjunction, she creates a sensual tone to
transmit her admiration to the audience.
Lowell opens the poem with a bold tone, explicitly addressing the subject of her
work and beginning to characterize and compliment her. In using a second person
point of view, Lowell begins to construct an intimate tone on which she will continue
to augment as the poem progresses. Though the speaker addresses her subject
outright in the poem, Lowell knows that readers of this poem feel as though they are
outsiders who, upon seeing the word you , imagine a private conversation. In this
way, Lowell manipulates her readers to feel as though they are witnessing in a
private moment, such as one shared between lovers.
Amy Lowell characterizes her muse as classically beautiful, alluding to various
forms of art as she does so. Lowell uses a simile to compare the lady of whom she
speaks to an old opera tune played upon a harpsichord . With her utilization of
phrases such as opera tune and harpsichord , she urges the audience to visualize the
grandeur and elegance of fine art and apply this imagery to her subject. Lowell
continues her comparison, soon likening the woman of which she speaks to the silks
of an eighteenth century boudoir . Not only does this solidify the image of elegance
and luxury for the reader, but it also introduces the motif of domesticity, which recurs
throughout the poem. Lowell s inclusion of adjectives such as faded , old , eighteenth
century , and outlived continue to characterize her muse, who one can