The Afterlife

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The Afterlife | Style

Address
A poem of address is directed towards a particular audience. In this case, the speaker addresses “you” in the first and last stanzas. This suggests that the “you” is the reader, but it is also the speaker himself, or at least another part of the speaker. By addressing the second person, the speaker can create a tone both distant and intimate and dramatize what is at root a lyric poem. Other poets who have used the second person for this effect successfully include Mark Strand, Margaret Gibson, and John Hollander.

Tone
The tone of a poem refers to the attitude...

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