AP poetry essay

    The stand out use of connotatively unsettling words, alludes to the lingering question in the narrators mind and his uncertain tone . Within the first stanza alone, the narrator presents the reader with an uncomfortable situation; weighing a dog with a bathroom scale using the displacement of their own weight. The scenario's discomfort is highlighted by the use of the words, 'awkward', 'bewildering', and 'shaky'.  It is later mentioned in the last stanzas of the poem that a relationship of the narrator's ended under uncertain terms. The unsettling words used in the first stanza, 'awkward' and 'bewildering' are again repeated in the last, capitalizing on the narrator's allusions. The way in which the narrator brings up the relationship, in the context of a mundane activity, causes the reader to believe that the relationship is always present in the narrator's mind. The lingering tones of regret and wistfulness are evident in the far fetched metaphor of weighing a dog, and the dynamics in which the narrator carried on a relationship with another person. To be reminded of such an event in everyday tasks emphasis's the extent to which it occupies the narrator's mind.