A Word is Dead – Analysis

According to the title, the principal subjet of the poem is a determinated word, but the title does not explain which word is and why the poetess is going to write a poem about this word.

It is also strange that "word" is written with a capital letter and it is related to the adjective "dead": it evokes curiosity and strangeness because, usually, the adjective is related to people, or animals, or other live things, too.

Apparently, the poem is composed by one stanza, but it is composed by two stanzas and each one is a tercet: so there are in total six lines.

In the poem, the narrator is the third single person: this is highlighted by the third line "some say".

The first tercet expresses the opinion of normal people, who said that determinated, and still unknown, word. Also, the time is unknown: a word dies when someone says it, but the poetess does not says anything more.

The second tercet is different from the first. The narrator is the first single person, and it is the poetess' point of view: she expresses the life-cycle of the "Word". So, the function of the second tercet is to vehicle her personal opinion about the language, instead of common people who kill that specific word, which is still unknown to the reader.

In the end, there are two point of view: one is related to common people, the second one is related to the poetess herself. The reader, reading the whole poem, does not know yet which "Word" does the poetess mean and he does not know what point of view is right, he does not know if there is a right point of view instead of the other one.

In the first tercet the sound "d", present in words like "dead", "word" and "said", is a dental sound: its function is to block, to brake the rythm and suggests a sense of motionless.

In the second tercet the sound "s", present in words like "say", "begins" and, is a liquid sound: its function is to speed up the rythm and suggests a sense of motion and life.

The poem is short, all lines are very short and the last one is the shortest: the poetess might want to put the poem into the reader's mind, to stick into it. It is also highlighted by the presence of two run-on-lines, in order to make the rythm fast and easy.

The message is to think about the life-cycle of the word, because instead of having life and potential, as they do before they are used, their meaning is frozen now, and you can't pull anything new out of them.