Thanks for all the help last time, you really helped with my paper. But I have run into another problem. I need to interpret and point out poetic devices used in:

Nine Horses

For my birthday,
my wife gave me nine horse heads,
ghostly photographs on squares of black marble,
nine squares set in one large,
a thing so heavy that the artist himself
volunteered to hang it
from a wood beam against a white stone wall.

Pale heads of horses in profile
as if a flashcube had caught them walking in the night.

Pale horse heads
that overlook my reading chair,
the eyes so hollow they must be weeping,

the mouths so agape they could be dead-
the photographer standing over them
on a floor of straw, his black car parked by the stable door.

Nine white horses,
or one horse the camera has multiplied by nine.

It hardly matters, such sadness is gathered here
in their long white faces
so far from the pasture and the cube of sugar-
the face of St. Bartholomew, the face of St. Agnes

Odd team of horses,
pulling nothing,
look down on these daily proceedings.

Look down upon this table and these glasses,
the furled napkins,
the evening wedding of the knife and fork.

Look down like a nine headed god
and give us a sign of your displeasure
or your gentle forbearance
so that we may rejoice in the error of our ways.

Look down on this ring
of candles flickering under your pale heads.

Let your suffering eyes
and your annonymous deaths
be the bridle that keeps us from straying from each other

be the cinch that fastens us to the belly of each day

as it gallops away, hooves sparking into the night.

Here is a list of some poetic devices (certainly not all devices):

1 Theme

2. Mood

3. Voice

Alliteration

Assonance

Onomatopoeia

Metaphor

5. Free Verse

Blank Verse


Consonance

Sonnet

6. Repetition

7.Rhyme / Lack of Rhyme

Meter

8. Stanza (How is the poem organized on the page?)

Simile

Rhythm

9. Form


The devices which I have numbered can be found in this poem. One of the
key devices Collins uses is mood. His poems are often humorous and sarcastic. For instance in this poem why does he talk about a black car parked by the stable, and why does he bring in the faces of the saints?

If you look at the list above and address the devices I've numbered you should easily be able to turn your analysis into a reasonably long essay about the poem.

Les

thank you so much for all the help!

In case its useful, St Bartholomew is the patron saint of tanners, his symbol is a flaying knife. No obvious connection between Agnes and horses.