In Adrienne's Rich's poem, "Song," and Claude McKay's poem, "America," imagery plays an important part.

In "Song," perhaps the title gives the reader its first clue that the poem has little to do with loneliness, as one might think at the end of the first line of verse. Rich's imagery provides further enlightenment. Each image presented in all of the stanzas express something positive to offset the question of loneliness.

In the first stanza, Rich defies that concept of loneliness, agreeing that she is only lonely if beauty in the world can be loneliness:

...as a plane rides...aiming
across the Rockies
for the blue-strung aisles
of an airfield on the ocean.

The second stanza finds Rich admitting to loneliness only if it feels like a woman on a journey, going where she chooses, and avoiding places that do not suit her (what freedom!):

as a woman driving across country... / leaving behind... / little towns she might have stopped / and lived and died in, lonely...

(She would have been lonely if had she...

(The entire section contains 598 words.)