A WORD is dead

A WORD is dead

When it is said,

Some say.

I say it just

Begins to live

That day.

This poem consists of six lines with two tercets: the first one expresses the common peoples' opinion and the second one reports the poetess' one.

This structure is used by the poetess to underline the two different opinions presented in the text that show opposites thoughts about the word and its life.

In the first tercet there are dental sounds as the rhyming couplets of the first two lines, that make the reader slowing down, the repetition of the letter “s”, that takes you thinking about the words and the meaning of this lines, the vowels used with a long sound which give a perception of a sense of vastness.

In the second one there are some enjambments, that make the reader lingering and thinking about the meaning of this words and they also give importance to the phrases leave uncompleted in a line and terminated in the next one, the words that contain the vowel “a” make a slower rhythm perception than the others which, in reverse, appear faster even during the reading.

The rhythm used is the iambic pentameter in the first tercet and the trochaic one on the second one, to highlight even more the division between the two opinions expressed in this poem.

Moreover, on the first tercet the verbs used are expressed with the Simple Present to talk about something that doesn't change, while on the second one there is also the Simple Present but the use of the word “that” introduce a future perception.

The opposite thoughts are also distinguished by the use of passive forms for the verbs of the other peoples' opinion which communicate the death of the word when it is said, and the use of the active forms to express the life, something that has a future and that starts to live by the moment it is used.

Even the use of the punctuation helps the reader to understand the two tercet. Indeed each of them finishes with a punctuation point, to mark even more the separation between them.

In the poem the subject of the composition is written in capital letters. In this way the reader can understand immediately the centre of the text and the meaning of the expressions and the words used, putting them in relation with the main topic of the poem.

The words used can also be put in a semantic field about the opposition between life and death, which are the true message of the composition.