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Griess Diction Analysis Essay 01/23/12 Burning Soliloquies Send Me To My Knees And I Bow to The Words That Reach Me I Honor the Phrases That Build Me Each word is chosen for impact. Whether from a spontaneous burst of passionate declamation or from weeks or months or years or countless agonising nights and tears spent machinating to discover that one word to finally make a line sound right, the syllables and phonemes are painstakingly selected for the most effective level of impact. A word is a choice, and authors decide upon thousands of them. A single line of a novel can be filled with twenty-five, a special standalone stanza of a coruscating poem may only contain a single one. A phrase is punctuated by breaths and by conglomerations of letters that lend themselves to respiration or repetitive aspiration that can only leave one lacking air for exaltation. Literature is formed by the decisions that each author or poet chooses to inscribe upon the paper to form a finished product. Each word selected is another crenel in the castle wall, another decisive part of the visage and the veracity of the vivifying vision of the viewers schema. Diction is what defines a work for the reader. It is the bloom of the piece; it is noticed and presented in the most emphatic manner that it may be.

Andrea Gibsons diction in her poem Blue Blanket evokes emotional responses in the readers mind, and every word is acutely placed. She controls words with double meanings, uses similes to great effect, and renders the audience helpless but to ache or cry in the wake of her verbosity. Gibsons use of imagery is shocking and uncensored. The imagery she employs creates a vivid idea of the expressed situation in the mind of the audienceone that they wish they could remove. Such moments as describing a grip as thick with hate or a five fingered noose provide startling examples of exactly what it is she is trying to convey (Gibson). A further example is when Gibson is describing the sheets of her pain. The poem is about rape, and the double meaning of sheets as both referring to bed sheets and as large amounts of something is a heart wrenching one. Whenever the rapist himself is mentioned, horrifying imagery is used to create an atmosphere of fear and shame. Gibson describes the man as two hundred pounds of hate, and states that the ceiling fan still feels like his breath. Such mental visions as the latter one instill a sense of discomfort in the reader. The prospect of the ubiquitous ceiling fan being a constant reminder of shame and terror is certainly one the communicates the horror of the situation the author aims to depict. Gibsons choice of single words is also very effective. The first line consists only of the word still (Gibson). Had the poem not opened with this line, the following lines about feeling too horrible to look in the mirror would not be as powerful. The still directs the reader or listeners attention to the fact that this horror has had duration; it has already been happening for quite a while. When she mentions a glance in the sixth

line, Gibson selected a word that would imply tentativeness and a short time period. Her unwillingness to perform this small act delivers more effectiveness than a different word would have. The implied comparisons that Gibson uses in this slam are very striking. The analogy between veterans of the Vietnam War losing their limbs and women losing their wings of innocence presents and conveys the idea that women who are raped lose something forever that used to be a part of them as inherent as limbs and in circumstances as tragic as war. Gibson also compares people to gods and stars just a few lines later. These comparisons serve to illuminate childrenrepresenting people in generalas the sources of their own success regardless of what has occurred previously in their lives. This powerfully condensed statement is an excellent example of what makes Andrea Gibson a skillful poet of this genre. Gibsons turns of phrase and command of didactic diction sum to an effectively communicative poem. Her control of all too real and understandable imagery from comparisons and her clever application of double meanings added to the startling frankness of the poetry. Gibsons diction started off painfully and ended with a statement that contrasted sharply with the rest of the poem to create an unexpected ending to a horrifying tale.

Works Cited Gibson, Andrea. "Blue Blanket." Andrea Gibson. Tumblr, 27 Sept. 2010. Web. 22 Jan. 2012. <http://andreagibson.tumblr.com/post/1199663160/ blue-blanket-still-there-are-days-when-there-is>.