Poem Analysis-Sor Juana

Elma Gonzalez
Creative Writing
Professor Mary Beth O’Connor
March 9, 2012
Love Opened a Mortal Wound: Poem Analysis
There are a few poems I remember learning in my childhood, and most ofthose were by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Mexico’s tenth muse. Inés, a 17th century nun and prolific Mexican poet, is well known for her intelligent verses and rhythmic poetry with heavily set rhyme. Herpoems were all written in Spanish, so the structure of her poems is often lost in translation. In her poem, “Love opened a mortal wound,” which is translated by Jaime Manrique and Joan Larkin, Inézexplores the misfortunes of love. However, despite somber imagery and diction, the poem transmits a positive message.
The poem is structured like a sonnet, separated in four stanzas; the first two havefour lines, and the others have three. In the first stanza three of the lines are end-stopped, while the second line in enjambed, and this same pattern is followed in the second stanza. In the thirdstanza, the first line is enjambed, and in the fourth stanza, the second line is enjambed. The poem does not seem to follow any rhythmic pattern or have rhyme. Though the stanzas are structured as ina sonnet, the poem does not follow an iambic pentameter.
It should be pointed out that this is not the case in the original Spanish version of the poem. In this version, the poem is a sonnet inevery sense of the word, and has perfect rhyme throughout the poem.
Other elements found in the poem are assonance and alliteration. The second line “I counted, counted” and the fourth “One life, Ithought — a thousand deaths” in the second stanza have alliteration of the “th” sound. Throughout the fourth stanza the “s” sound is also repeated. The first and second line in the first stanza “Loveopened a mortal wound/In agony, I worked the blade” have repeated “o” and “i” sounds respectively.
Due to the lack of rhythmic pattern, the poem’s imagery controls its flow. Instead of listing a number...