I have to write a poetry response on "grief" by elizabeth barrett browning and I don't even know where to start. What is the poem about??? What are some elements i could mention??

Altima, let's take a look at the poem.


Grief
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I tell you hopeless grief is passionless,
That only men incredulous of despair,
Half-taught in anguish, through the midnight air
Beat upward to God's throne in loud access
Of shrieking and reproach. Full desertness
In souls, as countries, lieth silent-bare
Under the blanching, vertical eye-glare
Of the absolute heavens. Deep-hearted man, express
Grief for thy dead in silence like to death -
Most like a monumental statue set
In everlasting watch and moveless woe
Till itself crumble to the dust beneath.
Touch it; the marble eyelids are not wet;
If it could weep, it could arise and go.

The thing that strikes me besides Browning's use of language which is exquisite and beautiful is how her images are cold and stark like death itself. She wants the reader to think of the marble of gravestones when considering their emotional experience of grief.


What is the poem about? I think you could answer that for yourself.

What elements should I consider? Language, rhyme scheme, images, similies.

Have you ever felt grief, or witnessed it? How could this poem relate to a real life experience?


Les

I'm not clear on what a 'poetry response' is, but I might respond that it is an attempt at a Petrarchan sonnet, with (it seems to me) several metric stumbles and it (again) lacks the volta on line 9.

>What is the poem about???

A web search pops up this note:

She wrote to Anna Jameson that the death of her brother had turned her "...white-souled, the past has left its mark with me for ever." EBB to Anna Jameson, 26 February 1852; Kenyon, II, 1897, p.58.