The Kiss By Siegfried Saloon

The kiss by Siegfried Sassoon

The poem is based on a amplified personification of a machine gun and bullet. The machine gun is represented by the sister of the soldier who is the poetic voice. Thebullet is personified with the soldier’s brother. This brings us to the theme of the physcological effects of the war in terms of loneliness and cruelty. The poetic voice shows to have grown feelingsfor his machine gun and his bullets. This shows the phsycological impacts of war specially killing which creates on soldiers the love for killing and changes the contextual view to shoot someone toas the poetic describes it as a darting kiss from the gun.
The poem has a romantic tone which at the same time has an ironical meaning because of the cruelty in war. But then the rhyme abba in thethree stanzas and the smoothness in the phonical aspects gives the poem a romantic tone trying to follow a cliché of the kiss.
The beginning of the poem stars with an alliteration to these I turn inthese I trust in which every letter in the verse starts with the letter T but I. Which gives its audience and introduction of the personal tone the poetic voice is giving to the poem in the firststanza.
The importance of his brother lead and sister steel are shown as in the second verse the are written as proper nouns showing the personification that is going to be the main subject throughout thepoem.
The next verse is all about the bullet in which Sassoon uses a personification “blind power” here the poetic voice starts to make allusions on the senses.
Taste Sweet Sister
In the secondstanza Sasson makes sexual allusion of a flying bullet. “He spins, and burns and loves the air”. It is also a pathetic fallacy as the bullet has human feelings, in this case love. There is apolysyndeton with thee word and “spins and burns and loves the air and splits the skull”
Another sexual allusion is found in “se glitters naked cold and fair” the word fair signifies the ideology of the...