Preliminary Formal Analysis AKA Reading a Poem 500 Times

    Although daunting, this is excellent practice for the literary criticisms to come. These observations about form from the close reading of John Donne's "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" will aid immensely in setting the framework for a literary critique. Here are the ten observations I listed:

1. Genre/Subgenre. This is a rhymed poem with nine stanzas. It may be considered a lyrical poem due to its emotional nature, rhyming, and general musicality. The musicality is evident in the line, "if they be two, they are two so / as stiff twin compasses are two; / thy soul, the fixed foot makes no show / to move but doth, if the other do."
2. Narrator/Persona. Based on history, we can assume that the narrator of this poem was John Donne. When he wrote this poem, he was leaving to go to Europe, leaving his wife behind in England. He wrote this for her before he left, making his persona and voice far more personal and touching, as shown in the last two lines of the poem: "Thy firmness makes my circle just, / and makes me end where I begun." 
3. Setting. From the text, we cannot come to know a setting. It is more the expression of Donne's feelings than an actual event. 
4. Plot. In the poem, it is obvious that the narrator, presumable Donne, is leaving his lover for a time. He wishes that she would not be sad to see him leave and shares words of love and comfort with her. The line, "our two souls therefore, which are one, / though I must go, endure not yet / a breach, but an expansion, / like gold to airy thinness beat" talks about the narrator leaving.
5. Language. Something that I observed was the amount the word "two" was used. It was used in several different ways. This choice of diction must be extremely important to the poem because of the sheer number of times "two" was used. Donne says "two souls", "twin compasses are two", "if they be two, they two are so", 
6. Tone. The tone of the poem seems to start off gentle. Donne uses words like "mildly" and "whisper" which create soft sounds and feelings. Then, as the poem progresses the words become stronger with words like "stiff" and "just" that create harder sounds and more firmness.
7. Rhetoric. The audience of this poem was the lover or significant other being left behind, which is shown in the line, "Dull sublunary lovers' love... cannot admit absense." The hope the narrator has for the audience is that he or she will not mourn after him while he is gone. This can be deduced from the title of the poem "Forbidding Mourning." 
8. Character. We don't know very much about either the narrator or his lover, but we can draw some conclusions. The narrator's purpose is to stave off mourning for his lover, which we can derive from the title of the poem, and to share his love and affection for her before leaving. He writes beautifully about their relationship saying, "thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show / to move, but doth, if the other do."                                                                                                  
9. Textual Awareness. There was no intertextuality or metatextuality that I could find within the poem. Some lines seemed familiar and/or biblical, but I failed to find a reference. 
10. Visual Design. There are nine stanzas  in the poem and there are eye rhymes (like "move" and "love"). This design broke up the words effectively and created concise and easy to read sections for the reader.

     In all honesty, this was difficult for me. I am not particularly great at just looking at a text and immediately seeing all of these pieces. I am looking forward to reading my peer's observations and seeing where I was off and what I had right! I am hoping to get better at this!