Analysis of the poem “I look into my glass”

Reading the title, the reader expects the poem be about somebody that for a long time hasn’t being seeing with his eyes but only what his head convinced him he was seeing. Then the protagonist started watching into his glasses, finding out the realty.

The poem is arranged into three stanzas, that are all quatrains, so apparently there’s a regular patter, on a closer reading the reader sees some deviations of the word order, for example the eighth verse is shorter comparing it with the economy of the test and the verses three, seven and eleven are longer than the other. Notices the deviations the reader may be curious to find out why there’s this deviation.

In the first stanza the protagonist watches himself in a mirror finding out his body is getting old. The second and the third stanzas reports the feelings of the protagonist realizing it, what he hopes other people do and what happens in her mind.

The function of the first quatrain is to introduce the argument of getting old, the other two stanzas was created in relation to the first, expanding the core of the poem.

There is a phonological choose, the rhythm, that creates a bridge between two words, like skin and thin, that underlines over the concept that his body is getting old. Also in the fifth line there’s the use of a sound device, in particular it’s used the stress to underline the most important word of the verse, “I”, that is highlighted to create suspense, as if the poet is taking time to organize his ideas. There’s also the repletion of the conjunction “and”, maybe to create a list of what he saw when he watched his body in the mirror. finally there are enjambments, which create a sense of advancement in poetry, like between the third and the fourth lines.