I was told that this poem could be interpreted as either free verse(which i agree with!) or mostly blank verse. Iambic pentameter with some anapestic and trochaic substitutions. What lines would these substituions be in? I am so lost. I know what anapestic and tochaic mean, i just am confused on what lines they are in?
also, what is the different between the first and second stanza. I think the first one is from the mirrors perspective, fairly emotionless and straightforward. Possibly a definition of what a mirror does. Does that make sense?
The second stanza is still having the mirror as the speaker, but the mirror is now a lake and being an observer and trying to convey the emotions the women looking into the lake feels. This is kind of wordy, i know, but i am having a hard time putting into more concise words. Any ideas?
Mirror
I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
What ever you see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful---
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.
Could the line " I am not cruel, only truthful" be an example of irony?
Iambic stresses every 2nd syllable, anapestic every 3rd, so that,
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
Could be just AS it IS or JUST as it IS (2 iambs or 1 choriamb)
unMISTed by LOVE or disLIKE (anapestic)
Irony is hard to get a handle on. Usually, it means words used in a context different from their literal meaning - a contrast, often humorous. Or, something expected to be different from what actually occurs. There is also dramatic irony, where the reader knows what is going on, but the characters do not. And socratic irony where one professes innocence while interrogating another.
So, I guess you could use 'contrast' to define that line as ironic, sure.