Does word choice or form and structure provide the most convincing representation of ‘home’ in ‘home is so sad’?
Word choice is a term used to describe the words chosen by an author. The author uses word choices to the reader with a specific message. Word choice in poetry is what allows the reader to connect with the author on a personal level as it is the word choice that helps the reader explore the essence of a text. The Form and Structure of a poem is how the poem is set out. Poems usually have different forms such as sonnets and haikus. The form and structure of a poem is what actually puts emotion into the poem for example some poems are shaped with no full stops or no line breaks which can create a rushed and fearful feeling to the poem.
The use of the words ‘home’ and ‘sad’ in the same sentence conveys a very negative idea of what a socially constructed home is supposed to be like. This idea of home being a lonely and negative place is reinforced by the use of the words ‘no heart’, the fact that Lankin includes the adverb ‘so’ intensifies how sad the home actually is. Lankin successfully uses words to link home to human – ‘shaped to the comfort of the last to go’ this phrase creates the idea that home is how you make it, so only the people staying in the ‘house’ can make it in to a ‘home’. The word ‘comfort’ highlights the idea that no body as the same idea of what an ideal home is as everyone as a different interpretation of ‘comfort’ in a home. The idea of lose is explored in poem through the use of words such as ‘bereft’ and ‘withers’ which shows that home wants to win back its former inhabitants as it ‘bereft’ of anyone to please it . Personification of home such as ‘it stays as it was left’ adds to the sensitivity created in the poem and when the home ‘withers’ it is almost as though the house is dying because of the loss of the former inhabitant. This word choice and personification further emphasis the homes lose of its family.
The form and structure of the poem is portrayed in the first stanza - The poem