Clare Rossini's Use of Personification in "Final Love Note"
Have you ever had feelings toward an inanimate object, either for nostalgic reasons or purely because of preference? That object can sometimes seem as though it has a personality of its own and there exists a seemingly dynamic relationship between you and it because of the attachment you feel. This is precisely what Clare Rossini describes in her poem, "Final Love Note". Rossini uses vivid imagery and word choice to personify the old elm tree outside her room as a lost lover. In the first stanza, the speaker relates her past with her love. It seems that their relationship has been brief, but purely passionate. The speaker states "for months we've been together, hardly wanton / never touching" (1-2). Although the speaker claims their relationship is chaste, the next several images hardly sound so. The speaker's use of words like "commingled", "strewn", and "moaned" in lines 2-4 make the scene of the meeting of these lovers seem specially erotic. It is not until line 5 that we are given any indication that this lover is not human. The speaker states that her lover "moaned over [her] at night, never tiring / as human lovers do" (4-5). The
The tree became a living personality to the speaker of the poem. Although we all may not have experienced the intensity in our inanimate relationships that Rossini's speaker did, we can all relate to her loss. In lines 6-10 we experience the passage of time as shown by the changing of seasons. Her lover's "leaves moved /Summer-long, then suddenly caught fire", describing how autumn leaves turn from green to the color of flame, then wither and crumble as paper does in a fire (6-7). "In winter [she] endured [his] silences" because the branches were bare of the leaves that normally would rustle in the wind (8). Lines 9-10 paint the image of a moon rising through the silhouette of the tree's bare and gnarled branches. The tone of the second half of the stanza has become lonely and longing through the use of words like "endured", "tangled", and "trapped". Although the second stanza takes place in summer, the tone is not rejoicing, as one would expect after the long wait through winter. The lines "This summer, the slugs ate the yellow hearts / right out of my lilies, while you, elm, died on-" immediately show death and destruction when this
Some common words found in the essay are:
Garden Eden, Note Rossini, , Clare Rossini, mean literally, lifted garden,
Approximate Word count = 778
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)
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