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How does Sasha Maharaj use poetic devices in "Worthless" to discuss relationships?

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Sasha Maharaj employs elevated diction, masculine end rhymes, paradox, consonance, hyperbaton, and catachresis in "Worthless" to explore the emotional devastation of a breakup. The use of sophisticated language elevates the poem's subject, while paradox and consonance highlight the speaker's internal conflict and grief. Hyperbaton reflects disorientation, and catachresis conveys emotional pain through physical imagery. These devices collectively underscore the profound impact of failed relationships on the speaker's sense of self-worth.

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The speaker does use some word choices that operate on a higher level of diction than those we might typically be used to hearing on a conversational level.  They are even a more elevated diction than other similar words in the same poem.  The poet uses "deceased" in line 4 instead of dead; she uses "recalling" in line 5 instead of remembering; "dissipate" replaces something like fall apart, in line 8; "immensely," in line 12, fills in for a lot .  One way to interpret these word choices is that they seem to elevate the subject of the poem.  There are a lot of poems about lost love, break-ups, and the feelings produced by them, so it would be easy to write yet another trite poem about feeling "so filled with hate" or being "ripped apart."  However, by including the stronger word choices, the poet disrupts our...

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normal expectations of these kinds of poems.  These word choices stop and make us pay a bit more attention.  

The poet also makes the speaker sound a little older and more mature by elevating the diction: this is not a poem narrated by a despondent thirteen-year-old, someone that readers might be inclined to believe is overreacting or lacking perspective.  Rather, this poem is narrated by a grown woman who has been made to feel "worthless. / Falling apart and still nobody notices."  Here, we see that the end of relationships affects everyone terribly.

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In the poem, the author uses masculine end rhymes to emphasize her complete devastation after a painful breakup. 

I keep recalling the messages in my head,
Making me wish that I was dead.

So here I am alive, yet dead inside.
All I know, my best, I have tried.
I never wanted it to end this way,
there's so much more i needed to say.

She tells us that she did her best to salvage her troubled relationship, but all her efforts were in vain. Each end-stopped line is deliberate in rhythm and heavy with grief. The author also uses paradox ("So here I am alive, yet dead inside") to emphasize the depth of her suffering. She is physically alive but spiritually crushed by the breakup. Additionally, the bicolon "So much of anger, so filled with hate" highlights the author's strong emotions. She is angry with herself and perhaps with her lover as well. The word "hate" accentuates the idea that a relationship can be poisoned by negative emotions.

The author also uses consonance ("The damage is done, I can barelybreathe.") to emphasize the fact that the relationship is irretrievably broken. There is no healing in store for the couple in question; in fact, the line "I can barely breathe" highlights the sense that the author is drowning in her pain.

The following line is an example of hyperbaton:

All I know, my best, I have tried.

Here, the poet uses inverted order to emphasize her disorientation and mental disequilibrium in the aftermath of her breakup. In her last lines, she tells us that she's "falling apart," but no one notices her pain. Her assertion here is similar to her proclamation at the beginning of the poem:

I’m broken inside and can’t feel.
The damage is done, I can barely breathe.
Ripped apart and torn to pieces,
My once strong heart is now deceased.

The poet uses catachresis to highlight her heightened emotions. She uses physical terms to describe her ordeal, but she has not actually been "ripped apart" or "torn to pieces." She is obviously still living and her heart is not literally "deceased." Catachresis occurs when an outlandish comparison is made between two things. In this case, the poet equates her deep emotional anguish to the actual death of her physical body.

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