Thursday, 21 April 2016

single word requests - What literary device is this?

From behind the moon boys' graves
bleed endlessly; from photograph
to browning photograph they blacken
headlines, stranded outside of time
at the story's frigid edge.



That is an interesting interpretation. I'd like to challenge you, however, to consider (and answer):
a. Why are they called moon boys?
b. Why are the mothers and lovers (I like your interpretation that their handling of the paper blackens it) behind, or if they are not behind, what is?
c. Who or what is stranded outside of time at the story's frigid edge, and why?



If these are difficult to answer (as in, that's my point! There's no subject!), please consider the literary device called hyperbaton:




A literary device wherein the author plays with the regular positioning of words and phrases and creates a differently structured sentence to convey the same meaning.




That would rearrange more normally to



Boys' graves bleed endlessly from behind the moon;
they blacken headlines from photograph to browning photograph
stranded outside of time at the story's frigid edge.



Here, the subject is boys' graves, they bleed blackening headlines, etc.



You need to ask yourself, before you ask for a literary device in which there are no subjects, which interpretation makes more sense?



Poems have subjects; if they are not named, they are alluded to; if they have no identifiable subject, then the subject is the poem itself.



you might be interested in this.

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