Close Reading Analysis on “A Poem” by Therese Renaud
The narrator whom to be the girl is the automatist while the boy is the surrealist in the poem. It was shown as the girl define and describe how human mechanism functions in different kind of attack as the author used complex body functions such as tightrope walker and rumpled hair. On the other hand, the boy’s surrealist point of view was defined and described as he discussed the images of the sun as it submerge in his dream. Through this, the author’s identity emerged in her poem as it shows how these two characters perceived their existence as well as their ideologies.
The themes of this poem are love and beauty because the boy perceived his dream as beauty within it before the girl came and interrupts him. On the other hand, the girl’s ideology as she counter-attacks the boy is love though she discussed it in different form of symbolism because she used body languages and actions of human. In this sense, they both reunite themselves and become one in the end of the poem.
The dream symbolizes the boy while the girl symbolizes the sun. “Why have you come to disturb my dreams of key melting in the sun?” This line showed the connection between the two characters. As the dream went through its occurrence to life, the sun melts and disturbs it as it encounters new idea, which was seen in “Because the horse with the rumpled hair has drunk the wine meant for the fire lamps.” From being the sun and the dream, the two became the rumpled hair which refers to the girl and the wine which refers to the boy. Because they could not create an amusement within these two symbolisms, they went back to where they started as what relationships used to have once it does not work on certain aspects. After going back to the beginning, they started a new choice as they already become the smoke and the tightrope walker but they became blind and sprained. That is why the boy asked, “Why did you watch without shivering as my left leg came off and became a bridge between happy souls and sad?” The situation in the concept of the boy and girl’s relationship started to fail but the girl was there to save their lives as she knows that the boy continued to rescue their love. At the end of it, they became one as they became stars putting their veils. It depicts marriage within the two characters.
Surrealist and Automatist’s perspectives interrelate to one another in this poem as what the author wanted to claim and justify. The subconscious mind of the author as well as the characters and narrators in the poem were connected to one another to depict the essence of surrealism and automatism in one attack. From tremendous beings, the sun and dream went down to earth and create human figures and body movement. However, in the end of the poem, they went back to the beginning where everything started but as one. They both became star with veils of beauty and love within them. Through this, surrealist and automatist point of view start in the beginning but also ended in the beginning. It means that this poem is a cycle of being that both surrealist and automatist used to convey.
Bibliography
Renaud, Therese. A Poem.
